BANGOR – Saying the state had not fully investigated the matter, Penobscot County and Bangor officials on Wednesday urged court officials to reconsider locating a proposed court facility on the existing campus facilities.

The comments by the officials came one day after Chief Justice Leigh I. Saufley, head of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, told reporters that the combined district and superior court facility would not be located on the Hammond Street campus.

She spoke after giving the annual State of the Judiciary presentation to the Legislature.

County and city officials had been critical of the site selection process, contending that they hadn’t been involved in it and that the state hadn’t fully reviewed the existing property as a viable option.

“I’m disappointed that the chief justice hasn’t spoken with the city or the county about this decision prior to the announcement yesterday,” Penobscot County Commissioner Peter Baldacci, a Bangor attorney, said.

“We were hoping that it would have been a good faith effort to look at the existing site and see if it were a suitable location, but apparently that is not to be,” he said.

Baldacci also said that the state has been frugal with the information it has given out on the project, including consultants’ assessments of the high costs of developing on the existing site.

The news also didn’t sit well with Bangor City Manager Ed Barrett, who on Wednesday remained unconvinced that the state had exhausted all its options to build on the property where now the superior and district courts stand.

“They have not, to the best of my knowledge, really looked at the possibility of placing a new facility on that campus,” Barrett said.

In the past, the state considered renovating the existing buildings in a feasibility study based on the premise that the Bangor police station, located on Court Street, would remain where it is.

That has changed, and now the city plans to build the new police station on Main Street, opening up potential space for the state to build a new court facility still in close proximity to the Penobscot County Jail on Hammond Street, Barrett said.

Proponents of keeping the courts on campus have argued that moving the court facility would create additional problems and costs, specifically transporting inmates back and forth between the jail and courts.

Court officials, including Maine Supreme Court Justice Paul Rudman, who sits on the site selection task force, have countered that if the city doesn’t consider the existing site suitable for a police station, then the courts shouldn’t either.

If there is any general agreement, it’s that the court facility should remain in Bangor’s downtown where it can provide easy access not only to those who work there, but also to the public who use it, acknowledged James Nixon, a Bangor attorney and president of the Penobscot County Bar Association.

Nixon said the association’s members have yet to be polled as to where specifically the court facility should go. But last week, Rudman polled the organization during a meeting and got a clear majority support for keeping it downtown.

Speaking for himself, Nixon said no one has ever told him that the court should be moved just for the sake of change.

And he said that if it was economically and environmentally feasible, he thinks that everyone’s first choice would be to remain on the campus.

For City Manager Barrett that’s the point.

“All we are asking is that the court take another look at the city-county property,” he said.