"There is no final list of courthouses" that will be funded during the current fiscal year, Martha Dorris, acting associate administrator at the General Services Administration, said Thursday. "Any speculation would be purely that."

In response, Higgins said: "The federal government has been jerking Buffalo around for the past seven years on this courthouse project. Congress today approved funding and directed the federal government to build the Buffalo courthouse - the only authorized courthouse project in the nation."

Indeed, that bizarre back-and-forth over a building that's sure to be built came as it got its final congressional approval.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed a resolution authorizing $123.2 million in funding for the project, a procedural move that allows the GSA to go forward with construction of the courthouse which has been the U.S. judiciary's top building priority for several years.

Higgins said Wednesday that construction on the project would begin by Labor Day and be completed by 2010. The Buffalo Democrat said he got his information from Susan Brita, staff director of the transportation subcommittee that oversees courthouse projects.

Brita could not be reached to comment. Mary Kerr, a spokeswoman for the committee, said Brita received confirmation on the project's details from a "senior portfolio manager" at the GSA. Kerr declined to identify that person.

In contrast, Dorris, who heads the GSA's Office of Citizen Services and Communications, said the list of projects to be funded will be announced by mid-March.

"If Brian Higgins thinks that Buffalo's name is on the list, there's no list to have a name on," Dorris added.

Higgins dismissed such comments as "typical of the federal bureaucracy." He noted that the GSA asked for the approval his committee gave to the Buffalo courthouse, thereby indicating that the building must be on the drawing board.

And it better be, Higgins said.

"I'm not going to be jerked around by GSA," he said. "If GSA wants a fight here, they'll get a fight."

If there's a fight, however, it might just be between Higgins and other local members of Congress.

The entire Western New York delegation and New York's two senators have been pushing for the courthouse project. Aides to various lawmakers grumbled privately Thursday that Higgins had jumped the gun and grabbed headlines that ought to have been shared.

The local point man on the courthouse project - U.S. District Judge William B. Skretny - seemed perplexed by the dust-up.

What Dorris said "is inconsistent with everything I've heard all day," Skretny said.

He said he had heard encouraging words about the project from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, "and I talked with the regional office of GSA, and they were very optimistic," Skretny said. "I'm very confident and optimistic."

e-mail: jzremski@buffnews.com.