Months after deciding to build a permanent wall between two new Capitol hearing rooms, legislators have voted to spend $13,000 to demolish it.

Removing the barrier will convert two small rooms into a single, large hearing room for a North Dakota House committee's future use, said Rep. Rick Berg, R-Fargo, the House majority leader.

The rooms were created last fall, at a cost of $175,000, for two House Appropriations subcommittees during the 2007 Legislature.

They were fashioned from space that was formerly used to store copies of legislative bills and other documents. The Legislature's interim Legislative Management Committee hired an architect to draw up design options, which included leaving the space as one large room, or splitting it in half.

Lawmakers decided on two rooms. Neither one ended up getting much use.

House Republican leaders decided to reduce the number of Appropriations subcommittees from four to three, so one of the new rooms wasn't needed.

The other subcommittee, Government Operations, used one of the rooms during the session's opening weeks before its members fled to space they had earlier used, near the balcony of the House chambers.

The subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, said the new room was cramped and that pillars within it made it difficult for some committee members to see people who were testifying.

"It was just plain uncomfortable to try to have hearings in there," Carlson said. Legislators and people who wanted to testify on bills, he said, were "jammed in there like sardines in that room. It just wasn't good."