While doing my Friday afternoon road work I thought about more I wanted to say on the subject, so if you’ve already read this it may bear re-reading.
In Washington today it seems there’s an advocacy group to represent each and every voter in America personally. Because I’m a registered architect, I receive items pushing the agenda of the American Institute of Architects; needless to say there’s not much I agree with when they have a stated agenda of making buildings “carbon-neutral” by 2030 to combat “climate change.”
Today I received their wish list for the final four-week Congressional term before the election and naturally much of it was focused on the supposed need for “green” buildings. But they shrewdly couched it as “members of Congress will consider a number of proposals that could potentially result in more work for you and your firm.” Perhaps that’s true, but as I’ll explain later this shouldn’t be the aim of government.
For the record, here’s the two main items the AIA is pushing Congress to adopt.
- Incentives for “green” commercial construction
- Funding for school construction and renovation
The incentive for climate-friendly construction the AIA advocates is yet more tinkering with the tax code, a tinkering that would extend the Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings tax incentive beyond the end of the year. (As it stands, developers can qualify for a $1.80 per square foot tax deduction if they build in a certain manner.) And while the organization argues that this would appease developers who worry about the expiration of the tax provision and create more work for the architectural industry, my contention is that eliminating the complexity of the tax code would create a far better economic climate than yet another comparatively minor tax change. Besides, energy efficiency should be a goal which pays for itself and thus needs no other incentive. It’s yet another carrot placed in the tax code to regulate behavior and extending it for whatever amount of time Congress eventually would pick out will just assure that the lobbyists who favor this will have something to keep them busy for years to come.
On the second point, it goes without saying that I’m dead-set against federal regulations on school building in construction, simply because I don’t recall seeing anything about a federal role in education in my copy of the Constitution. Yet again Beltway bureaucrats would be telling local schools how to do their work if they accept the Faustian bargain of federal assistance for constructing or renovating schools.
I’ll concede right here that for the most part the American Institute of Architects is pushing for this legislation as a way of making more work for architects, and that’s fine – they have every right to do so. They operate under the mistaken belief that the money being placed into these programs and tax changes doesn’t cost the economy anything, but reality is that both provisions make more permanent work for the lobbyists and special interests who swarm like locusts inside the Beltway and throughout each state capital. Sure, a local school district may receive federal funds or some developer gets a tax credit as a temporary boost to their coffers but I believe neither truly advance the interests of the architectural profession in the long run as much as streamlining the maze of federal bureaucracy and simplifying the tax codes would by putting more money in the hands of those who would be much better clients than Fedzilla would be.
The most recent tagline from the AIA regarding green construction is that they “walk the walk.” Unfortunately, they’re leading those of us in the profession down a primrose path to ever-expanding government influence where soon we’ll be told where and how to practice our craft to an even greater degree than that which we already labor. By giving in to the consensus of scientists more interested in bringing an end to capitalist society and punishing the one nation which has led the world in building innovation over the last century and a half, the organization which purportedly has our interests at heart is instead letting our collective selves down.
I’ve singled out the American Institute of Architects for two reasons – one is that it does affect my profession (the real one which actually brings me a paycheck) in advocating particular policy, and secondly because it’s one where I can understand their political aims in real terms. I’m familiar with the jargon and can break it down for those outside the profession to understand. Now imagine this group multiplied by the thousands who work in and around Washington and you understand why our nation is in the shape it’s in. It would not surprise me in the least if there were 200 lobbyists inside the Beltway for each member of Congress; in fact, I’m not certain that I’m not underestimating the figure. Each lobbyist has his or her agenda and, while I’m sure I agree with some of their aims, there are few who want to eventually put themselves out of a job by getting rid of the agency or department which they deal with the most.
Without reading a history of lobbying, I imagine it went something like this. A group of like-minded people decided it was time to hire someone to speak with members of Congress to address their concerns because they were too busy or too numerous to do it themselves. Naturally, once this happened a group who held the opposite viewpoint became alarmed and decided it was time to hire their own person, then others who had diverse aims saw the successes the first groups were having and decided to jump in. Each of them also came with big-money donors who could establish the offices and staffing required to buttonhole those in Congress full-time. It follows that the members of Congress, who only have so many hours in a day to deal with the issues on the table, began hiring their own staffers to meet with the increasing number of lobbyists and eventually the whole ball of wax has evolved to the situation we have now, despite numerous attempts at “reform” in Washington.
It has continually been my contention that true reform doesn’t occur unless two things take place: taking the money away from the black hole that exists along the Potomac and not allowing those who are elected to serve there to get too comfortable in the lifestyle by routinely sending them back every two to six years. Twelve years in each body seems to me a good lifetime limit for anyone. If it’s good enough to limit our Chief Executive to two four-year terms, then term limits are good enough for Congress too.
Instead of tying the hands of those who want to contribute to politicians with so-called campaign finance reform, let’s attack the root of the problem and starve the big-government beast. Then the AIA can go back to doing what it does best, providing sound contractual documents which are fair to owner and contractor interests alike.
I’ve been watching the green-fad sweep the colleges that claim me as an alumna, and so send me their alumni mags. They report that they’re busy trying to analyze existing buildings for their “carbon-footprint” and design new ones to be carbonistically (?) neutral. Sure, there has been waste and associated carbon-dioxide emission, so go ahead, reduce it. But please don’t pretend that the fate of polar bears depends on the temperature in classroom building, unless you can explain to me what we plan to do about volcanoes and cosmic ray bursts.