(Radio Iowa) – A southeast Iowa lawmaker estimates the budget in county could be cut by up to half a MILLION dollars due to the wide-ranging tax bill up for debate in the legislature today (Friday). One section in the bill gets rid of a law that dates back to Iowa’s horse and buggy days. It requires Lee County to maintain two courthouses — one in Fort Madison and one in Keokuk. Representative Martin Graber, who’s from Fort Madison, knows the history. “Originally the county seat was in Fort Madison and the courthouse was there and the people in the southern part of the county said: ‘Hey, we want something,’ so the original act of 1848 established one in Keokuk and they were happy,” Graber says. “They wanted to make sure that somebody who needed to file a court action in Keokuk didn’t have to go to Fort Madison to do it.”

The Lee County Board of Supervisors has passed a resolution asking legislators to repeal the 1848 law, so the board has authority to close one of the courthouses. Graber says the county offices are in Fort Madison, but that courthouse is likely to be closed because the one in Keokuk is larger and has enough space to accommodate trials. Graber says it will be a positive budget move for Lee County taxpayers. “In Fort Madison there’s the courthouse itself. Across the street they own a house. They have to have a sheriff’s deputy present — all of this ongoing stuff,” Graber says. “What I’ve been told is it probably approaches half a million dollars a year because they’re aging buildings, they have to do maintenance on them and stuff like that.”

The courthouse in Fort Madison was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. “There’s somebody somewhere who’s going to want to buy that piece of property,” Graber says. “It’s a tremendous old building. I mean just great architecture, big pillars and I can’t hardly believe there isn’t going to be some business or venue that’s going to want to say: ‘Hey, we’re going to turn this into a restaurant or a speakeasy or whatever it may be.”

Fort Madison was originally a U-S Army post and the site of a battle in the War of 1812. It’s named for James Madison, the 4th president of the United States. The City of Keokuk is named for Chief Keokuk of the Sauk tribe. There’s also a Keokuk County — about a hundred miles northwest of the City of Keokuk.