About 50 congressional staff attended the briefing to hear about proposed policies to make the country’s 500,000 federal buildings more energy efficient, including the High-Performance Federal Buildings Act, a bill recently introduced by caucus co-chair Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo. The measure would require federal agencies to consider life-cycle cost analysis for the design, construction, operations, and maintenance of buildings, which would help federal agencies spend funds more efficiently and would also require the employment of architects. “The architects played a key role in helping to build a coalition for my bill,” Carnahan says.
Via the building caucus, the AIA and ASLA are invited to a monthly meeting at the D.C. offices of ASHRAE, the society of heating, refrigeration, and air conditioning engineers, which boasts 55,000 members. Every third Thursday of the month, dozens of organizations from the building industry meet to discuss policy and strategies to build support on issues. “We work closely with the AIA to identify topics and to coalesce on topics of mutual interest,” says Doug Read, the chief lobbyist at ASHRAE.
In February 2009, for instance, when Congress was considering the $787 billion stimulus package, billions in school-reconstruction funds were eliminated from legislation that the House passed, putting untold pending construction projects in jeopardy. The AIA helped create an 80-member ad hoc coalition that put pressure on lawmakers to restore the funds for school construction. The final legislation included about $49 billion for states to allocate to public schools for modernization, renovation, repair, and construction projects. The funding also helped prevent teacher layoffs and program cuts for school-reconstruction work.
2012 PRIORITIES
The AIA has announced an ambitious four-part legislative agenda for this year. What is the likelihood that these goals gain traction?
Thousands of construction projects are stalled because credit is still frozen at many financial institutions. The Capital Access for Main Street Act would allow community banks—an important source of funding for small businesses—to write down their debt over a longer period, enabling them to bulk up their finances and increase lending. Introduced in 2010 by representatives from both parties, the bill is regarded as a short-term measure that makes more financing available to jump-start the building industry. Because it wouldn’t cost taxpayers anything and isn’t considered a bailout, the legislation is receiving considerable attention. “This is not a silver bullet. But it is an easy solution, and it helps more than the design industries,” says Andrew Goldberg, the AIA’s senior director of federal relations. “If we can get this industry moving we can also move the dial on the national unemployment rate.” A modified version of the bill passed the House in 2010 but died in the Senate. Chance of passage? In an average year the odds would be good, but this year the bill will likely “get gummed up in policy fights,” Goldberg says. On the positive side, it has one important and elusive commodity: bipartisan support.
The Federal Energy Efficient Commercial Building Tax Deduction was created in 2005 to encourage building owners, school districts, and state and local governments to retrofit their buildings and save on energy costs. It provides a deduction for energy-saving improvements and has been a lifeline for many architecture firms that are pushing building retrofits to meet sustainability standards. If a building meets the overall requirement of a 50 percent energy savings, the deduction is capped at $1.80 per square foot (a partial deduction is allowed for energy savings below 50 percent). But owners have complained that the incentive isn’t big enough to justify the initial costs; developers contend that an increase in the rate would spur additional work. New proposals would raise the deduction to $3 per square foot. Chance of passage? “Very, very low because there are costs associated with it,” says J.P. Delmore, the NAHB’s assistant vice president for government affairs. “Anything that Congress looks at is all dollars and cents.”
Reforming the tax code to help small businesses is part of the sweeping tax debate that is mired in partisan bickering and conflicting agendas. But it is crucial for architecture firms, because an estimated 95 percent employ 50 or fewer people, says the AIA’s Goldberg: “One of the challenges we face is getting the point across that any policy changes that affect small businesses have a big impact on the profession because so many are small businesses.” Chance of passage? Wrangling over tax reform is intense. The lobbying aim here, however, is not to pinpoint the right tax rate but to educate Congress about how architecture firms operate and what unfairly affects them as small businesses. Architects did recently help kill an S corp. provision in a bill that would have increased the tax burden on small firms.
Transportation legislation reform is another broad effort to spur job growth. Federal laws provide financing to states and localities for transportation and planning programs, which support street design, highway, transit, and bridge projects, among others. The goal is to draft a bill that would ensure continued financing for at least two years; provisions that expand the ability of communities and planning organizations to work with the public; and incentives for states to integrate transportation, housing, and land-use planning across multiple agenices, which would help make communities more livable places.“The more holistic it [design] is, the better off you will be,” Goldberg says. And the emphasis on planning “means more opportunities for architects and design professionals to have a role in the process.” Chance of success? A transportation bill currently being debated on the Senate floor contains many of these provisions and has some momentum because many unions, business groups, and environmental organizations support the general idea and goals associated with transportation reform. “There has never been a better moment to get the bill done,” Goldberg says. But there are also hurdles, especially if the contentious Keystone XL pipeline debate gets lumped into the discussion, which would make passage dicey.
In 2010, the AIA joined with other organizations to help pressure the government’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy to repeal a mandatory 10 percent withholding fee on architectural and engineering contracts until the construction work is completed—a stipulation included in government contracting regulations for more than two decades.
The AIA has also forged partnerships with the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), which employs 11 lobbyists and six outside lobbying firms. The association’s PAC contributed $2.1 million to federal candidates in the 2010 election cycle, of which 63 percent went to Republicans and 37 percent to Democrats. Members with the association’s 800 state and local chapters are constantly meeting with lawmakers, says Scott Meyer, the assistant vice president of government affairs. “I don’t think there is a day where we are not up on Capitol Hill speaking and talking to members in the House and Senate,” he says.
The NAHB’s biggest policy and political issue is ensuring that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac still play a key role in spurring home financing. Since the collapse of the housing market, Fannie and Freddie have become a political football, and there has been a push in Congress to eliminate the two quasiprivate companies from the housing market. “We have been doing a good job slowing that down,” Meyer says.
Architects have leveraged the NAHB’s lobbying muscle by working with them on issues such as sustainability in housing policy and on tax credits for construction of new energy-efficient homes. “We have a strong relationship with architects,” says James Tobin, chief lobbyist at the NAHB. “We like to bring architects with us to Hill meetings because we want to show the diversity of industries impacted by energy efficiency. And certainly, architects play a big part of the success of these issues.”
Consider also the AIA’s work with the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), which represents 30,000 contracting firms and owns a townhouse on Capitol Hill, where its five in-house lobbyists work full-time. AGC’s PAC doled out $985,249 to federal candidates in 2010, of which 76 percent went to Republicans and 23 percent to Democrats. While AGC doesn’t employ any outside lobbying firms, it does bring in several hundred of its members to Washington, D.C., three times a year to lobby and reinforce its advocacy message on the Hill. The organization’s local chapters also regularly arrange fly-ins to Washington to meet with lawmakers. AGC’s top priority is infrastructure spending, which dovetails nicely with the AIA’s priorities. The two organizations also lobby together on workplace safety and sustainable-infrastructure issues.
“We are thrilled to work with the architects because they are a leading indicator for construction, so when we go in and talk to lawmakers with them, they paint a fuller picture of whatever we are advocating for,” says Brian Turmail, spokesman for the contractors.
Joel Zingeser, FAIA, vice president of planning and business development for Rockville, Md.–based Grunley Construction Cos., is an AIA member and sits on AGC’s executive board. He says that the two organizations work well together on everything from tax issues to sustainable-energy policies.“The AIA coupled with the AGC has a significant voice,” Zingeser says.
Boots on the Ground
For all the progress that architects have made in refining their efforts on the Hill, one pointed criticism remains: They come to Washington to lobby as citizens far too infrequently. Very few of the AIA’s 80,000 members meet regularly with lawmakers in the capital or in their home offices apart from the annual Grassroots campaign, according to interviews with lawmakers for this story. Compare that with the National Association of Home Builders, which is helping to arrange for its 140,000 members to come to D.C. and meet with lawmakers throughout the year.
“The home builders are in my office much more often than the architects, by a wide margin,” says Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., who ran a roofing and construction company before his election to Congress. “I’d like to see the architects in here more.”
One reason why architects haven’t been as engaged in national public policy is that the profession demands long hours. “It takes time to lobby,” says Virginia architect Dennis Findley. “I think it’s also that architects don’t know how politics and Congress works. It’s intimidating. But architects, I think, can be very effective as lobbyists.”
Rep. Blumenauer, a former Portland, Ore., city commissioner and a strong supporter of the architects’ public policy agenda, has another theory. “Part of the problem is the nature of the profession. I have said, and no one has contradicted me, that architects remind me of a bunch of artists who pretend to be small businessmen and businesswomen. They are about design and care about some of the nuts and bolts of politics and legislation, but it’s not the first thing on their radar, or their second, or their third thing.”
Blumenauer says that he is continually prodding architects to get more involved in public policy. “The design community plays such a critical role in knitting together our infrastructure investments and how we relate to our natural environment,” he says. “For every 10,000 architects we can engage and energize, it ratchets up the discourse, the policy level, and the political process.”
Blumenauer points to the National Beer Wholesalers Association, which represents a tiny profession—just 3,300 wholesalers—but is highly visible on Capitol Hill and in state and local politics. The beer wholesalers employ six in-house lobbyists and three K Street firms, and spent $930,000 on lobbying in 2011. Their PAC is the second-largest donor of any industry in the 2012 cycle, contributing $1.5 million so far to federal candidates. (The largest PAC, the Realtors, have contributed $1.6 million so far this cycle.)
The beer wholesalers “are very focused, have an agenda, and everyone on Capitol Hill knows what it is,” Blumenauer says.
Robert Ivy, the AIA’s executive vice president and CEO, responds that his goal is to double the number of member donors to his organization’s PAC and to do more to persuade members to engage in politics. “Realistically, we’ll never be the Realtors, but we have a highly articulate group of individuals who are passionate about the built environment,” he says. Architects have become more engaged in local politics: Currently, at least 1,250 AIA members have joined various organization boards or have been elected or appointed to local and state positions. The AIA has created the Citizen Architect program to recognize their work. Such ongoing local lobbying efforts will translate up to the national level over time, Ivy says.
When Rep. Edwin Perlmutter, D-Colo., served in the Colorado state senate, for instance, architects helped him to pass energy-efficient building legislation. In November 2006, Perlmutter was elected to Congress and has since become a leading advocate for architecture, co-sponsoring the Capital Access for Main Street Act, which would encourage small community banks to provide more loans to small businesses, including architecture firms. “The architects and I have had a mutual-admiration society,” Perlmutter says.
As architects descend on the capital for Grassroots, they’ll hopefully be building the foundations for similar relationships with other lawmakers. The profession’s future may well depend on it.
Bara Vaida is a Washington, D.C.–based journalist who writes about lobbying, healthcare, and technology policy.
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