Downtown Riverside appears to be using the legal system as a revitalization tool - not by suing anybody, but by recruiting new courthouses. Last year, Riverside County agreed to finance construction of a $21 million federal courthouse in the same neighborhood as the county's Hall of Administration and County Courthouse. And in January, the Fourth District Court of Appeal moved from its longtime headquarters in downtown San Bernardino to a new courthouse adjacent to the federal site. The Court of Appeal move is considered a coup for Riverside, but it came as a blow to the already beleaguered downtown of San Bernardino. Division Two of the Fourth District has been located in downtown San Bernardino since it was created in 1966. But with a caseload that has doubled since 1987, the court has outgrown location in a former Safeco Title Insurance building there. The new building, which cost $7.2 million to build, is located at the corner of Lime and 12th in downtown Riverside. The new building's location was "driven by politics," Presiding Justice Manuel Ramirez told the San Bernardino Sun. The court receives approximately half of its workload from each county, with Inyo County accounting for a small portion of the caseload. The Riverside courthouse is the second new Court of Appeal courthouse constructed in a downtown location in recent years. Division Six of the Second District Court of Appeal - the only division located outside of Los Angeles - built a new courthouse in downtown Ventura after many years of renting office space there. The federal courthouse in Riverside will be located at the corner of Lemon and 12th. The county is building the courthouse with county-issued bond funds and leasing the property to the federal government for 15 years. The county had previously purchased the U.S. Bankruptcy Court building to accommodate its own expanding courtroom needs. Public Debt Issuance Stays Constant Public debt issuance in California remained constantly in 1998 at approximately $40 billion, according to new figures from the California Debt Investment and Advisory Commission. Local bond issues accounted for $28.7 billion, while state issues accounted for $11 billion - figures little changed from 1997. However, local agencies increased their debt in several areas, including housing, redevelopment, and hospitals. On the local front: o Local debt issuance for housing more than doubled in 1998, to approximately $2.1 billion. Most of the growth came from an increase in multifamily issues. In 1997, local agencies raised $600 million for multifamily housing on 91 bond issues; those figures grew in 1998 to $1.56 billion on 150 bond issues. Single-family debt rose from $475 million on 26 issues to $572 million on 29 issues. o On the commercial and industrial development front, local debt issuance remained constant at approximately 24 issues for $88 million. o Multiple-purpose redevelopment bonds rose by approximately 30%, from 77 issues for $1.28 billion in 1997 to 105 issues for $1.69 billion in 1998. o Local hospital and health-care bond issues rose from $1.29 billion (on 36 issues) in 1997 to $1.51 billion (on 42 issues) in 1998. o Local public works bond - the largest single category of local bonds - dropped slightly from $12.89 billion to $12.56 billion. o Local school facilities bonding dropped. For K-12 public schools, the figure dropped from $3.6 billion to $2.9 billion. College and university bonding remained more or less the same. Statewide bond issues were also about the same but had some overlap, including the following: o State public works bonding dropped from $2.6 billion to $1.4 million, largely because multiple-purpose public improvement projects dropped from $900 million in 1997 to almost zero in 1998. o As with local agencies, state agency bonding for housing projects increased substantially. But unlike local projects, the state funding went mostly for single-family housing. State housing bonds rose from $1.4 billion to $2.5 billion, with single-family bonds rising from $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion. Multifamily housing remained approximately the same at $147 million. o State education bonds, like their local counteparts, dropped somewhat. State school bonding dropped from $2.89 million to $2.27 billion. K-12 public school bonding dropped from $980 million to $820 million, while higher education bonding dropped from $1.88 billion to $1.13 billion. These trends are not likely to continue, however, given the passage of Proposition 1A, which authorized the issuance of some $9 billion in new state school bonds. More information on 1998 debt levels is available at the CDIAC web site, http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/cdadocs.htm.