PROVIDENCE — Governor Carcieri has vetoed legislation pledging $88 million to the construction of a new Blackstone Valley courthouse.

In a somewhat atypical veto message, Carcieri said: “Never, not even once, has any Rhode Islander — save a legislator or a judge — ever spoke to me of the pressing need to build a court-house in the Blackstone Valley.”

In most veto messages, Carcieri questions the legal logic or perhaps the impact of a proposed law on the operations of state government, the business community or in one case yesterday, on public schools. In this case, he basically questioned what the lawmakers were thinking when they granted Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams his wish for money to build the new courthouse in Smithfield, after their months of struggle to close a massive state deficit.

In a speech to lawmakers in April, Williams said the construction of the new courthouse could wait, but not long. “The need to better serve our citizens in northern Rhode Island and to decongest a severely overcrowded Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence by building a Blackstone Valley Courthouse is not going to go away. Nevertheless, in recognition of the hardship we all face, I have spoken to the House Speaker William Murphy and Senate President Joseph Montalbano about deferring this project for another year.”

Carcieri acknowledged that court personnel and those involved with the courts are sometimes “forced to deal with cramped spaces, inadequate parking, peeling paint and other difficult conditions.” But, “Rhode Islanders facing rising energy prices and deteriorating roads will find little solace in the proposed Blackstone Valley courthouse,” he said.

After struggling to close a $425-million deficit, and managing to find “only” $2.5 million in openspace bond money, “how does an $88-million ($140 million if one includes financing costs) courthouse receive the imprimatur of the people’s representatives?” he asked.

Carcieri said taxpayers have been “generous” to the judiciary. In the last two years alone, he noted, the state opened two new courthouses — the Kent County Courthouse and Traffic Tribunal — built without voter approval at a cost of more than $83 million.

“In these difficult budget times, with so many other needs, building another courthouse is unnecessary,” he said. And even if it were necessary, he said, “such expenditures should go before the voters” as proposed open space, clean water and University of Rhode Island construction projects do.

With construction unlikely to start before 2010 at the earliest, the joint resolution pledging money to the courthouse was one in a deluge of bills to clear the General Assembly in its final days. Senate passage came hours after the judiciary announced Williams’ decision to give R. David Cruise, a former senator and chief of staff to Senate President Joseph Montalbano, one of the new magistrate positions lawmakers created in the state traffic court last year. A statement from the judiciary noted that the decision was made “in consultation” with Traffic Tribunal Chief Magistrate William R. Guglietta, who until recently was chief legal counsel to House Speaker William J. Murphy.

kgregg@projo.com