It’s been an election year like no other, with traditional campaigning transformed by the same disruptions the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to American homes, businesses, and schools. In a political environment already marked by toxic polarization and relentless norm-breaking, the coronavirus made a volatile campaign even more unpredictable.
Although 2020 may feel especially fraught, volatility is nothing new in politics—an arena in which it seems the only constant is change. In the midterm elections alone, you have to go back decades to find one that didn’t shift party control in one or both chambers of Congress. Accordingly, AIA’s Policy Platform is designed as a unifying, bipartisan set of proposals, with a central message that aims to move the needle on the profession’s policy priorities.
But the platform is just one step: To achieve policy wins in the new Congress and administration, citizen architects must share our ideas with federal, state, and local officials on both sides of the aisle.
To help do that, AIA brought in two long-time allies and experts from both sides of the political spectrum.
In a recent webinar for AIA members, Republican John Feehery, a partner at lobbying firm EFB Advocacy, and former Democratic Congressman Jim Turner (Texas) of law firm Hance Scarborough, analyzed the Policy Platform plank-by-plank, sharing their viewpoints on AIA priorities like school safety, student debt, affordable housing, infrastructure investment, and climate change.
Both have deep professional experience in the political process. Feehery served as a senior communications aide for multiple members of Republican leadership, and was the longest-serving spokesman for the Speaker of the House, serving under Dennis J. Hastert, in history. He is a columnist for The Hill and appears frequently on programs like CNN’s “The Situation Room,” MSNBC’s “Hardball,” and HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” During his tenure in Congress, Congressman Turner served as the senior Democratic lawmaker on multiple House committees—including the House Armed Services Committee and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. He was also the Deputy Whip in the Democratic Caucus.
Both of these political experts see significant potential for architects to have an impact and make progress in the new Congress—even on climate issues, where the parties seem hopelessly divided. It’s up to architecture and design professionals to make the case for policies that will affect the health and prosperity of American communities for generations to come.
Architects can stay engaged through aia.org/advocacy, which provides the latest information on legislative issues and provides the opportunity to sign up for Architect Action Alerts.
A condensed version of Feehery and Turner’s conversation follows.
AIA Platform Tenet: Fund best practices for school design to promote healthy, safe learning environments, including updated guidance dedicated to design strategies that minimize threats of violence, foster a stronger sense of community, and promote positive learning environments.
Feehery: I don’t think that school safety is going to necessarily get separated from the issue of gun control, which is unfortunate because we all want to make schools safer. But there’s an opportunity to make schools safer and better able to handle things like COVID-19, and there should be opportunities in the design space for architects to impact that discussion. And I think there will be. And when we do go back to schools, there will be a whole effort to modernize them, make them more secure but also healthier places for kids to learn. I don’t think that either party will focus on it first; first they will focus on getting kids back to school.
Turner: There’s a sharp contrast in [the two parties’] approach to school safety. It’s been evident for some time that the Republican party is not going to want to deal with stronger gun control laws, and I don’t know what it will take for that to change. [The Democratic platform] includes a stronger emphasis on gun laws: stronger background checks, red flag laws, and other things that may enable gun violence to be curbed.
AIA Platform Tenet: Increase STEAM investment and student debt relief to strengthen a diverse talent pipeline.
Feehery: COVID-19 has put the issue of the value of the college experience back in the spotlight. Parents and kids are paying boatloads of money for online learning, and that’s not what they paid for. So this will put the idea back in the spotlight, and I think that will put the whole idea of college student debt back in the spotlight. I think there’s a real opportunity. Bernie Sanders promised free college tuition for everybody. Democrats want to push in that direction, while the Republican focus is more on how to cut the cost of college in the first place.
Turner: Our architects who graduated recently from college and architecture school know how expensive it is, and there’s no question that it is a barrier to young people for securing an education—particularly a graduate education. The Democratic platform calls for free tuition for families earning less than $125,000 per year, increased PELL grants, and relief for student debt. There are also provisions in the platform that call for a limit on the amount of payment on your debt based on your income level, so that paying off college debt doesn’t become an impossible, unobtainable objective. It’s important to look at the issue, but most of those issues are determined at the state level—particularly for public colleges and universities.
AIA Platform Tenet: Catalyze accessible and affordable housing; confront the legacy of discriminatory zoning and housing policies on communities; promote equitable development, including mass transit-oriented development, multimodal streets, and reformed “opportunity zones.”
Turner: Democrats have a strong platform plank on increasing affordable housing, including a $100 billion affordable housing program to upgrade housing and a $5 billion tax credit to ensure no family that’s eligible for subsidies has to spend more than 30% of their household income on rent. These are the kinds of things that Democrats have always been for, and they will continue to promote them. However, ambitious efforts to address the country’s problems will run headlong into fiscal realities.
Feehery: Expanded use of “opportunity zones” could help to revive inner cities and help end homelessness there.
AIA Platform Tenet: Buildings must consume less energy, use only renewable sources, and contribute power back to the energy grid. AIA urges federal officials to rejoin the Paris climate accord; create federal incentives for the adoption of net-zero carbon energy codes, and actively address the disproportionate impact of climate change and environmental degradation on communities of color.
Turner: Democrats and Republicans have a completely different worldview on climate change. More and more Republicans are beginning to accept the reality of climate change, but it’s slow. Democrats have a strong agenda encouraging strengthening of laws and regulations that will get us back on track. They call for rejoining the Paris accords and [reversing] the deregulation of climate matters that has been a hallmark of the Trump administration. When you look at the AIA platform, it’s strong on issues that will encourage the country to deal with climate change—issues of resiliency, sustainability, carbon-neutral approach to building. All these issues are at the core of what architects believe in, and it pretty well aligns with what the Democrats believe, as well.
Feehery: With both COVID-19 and climate change, Republicans are focused on economic security, energy security, and jobs. So it makes sense to stress to Republicans that, to get to a healthier economy, you need to do something about both COVID and climate. You need to stress that there’s a common-sense approach to both issues. We can improve the health of small businesses by giving them a tax credit designed to make workplaces better. From a Republican standpoint, you need to figure out a way to help small businesses grow the economy, and how can we present [solutions] to incorporate into their ideas that will build the economy as it protects us against climate, builds a more energy secure future, but also creates safer workplaces. By and large, architects are small business owners who need a growing economy to be able to work. So emphasize that being responsible stewards of the environment through better design is consistent with a growing economy.
AIA Platform Tenet: Utilize tax incentives to spark resilient, sustainable, and equitable development; hasten the adoption of updated building codes and standards, so the emerging built environment is resilient to future natural disasters and better equipped to shelter-in-place.
Feehery: While resilience has not been a priority in the Trump administration, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a priority in Congress. We can debate climate change, but if you live on a coast, you know that you’ve got to do something to deal with rising sea waters. And there are plenty of Republicans who feel that way. So there is an opportunity to create a bipartisan discussion about resiliency. This is also a huge issue with the insurance companies. I think there is a coalition to be had here if we put a greater emphasis on resilience as we have discussions about flood insurance and other big insurance programs that Congress deals with. [We expect both parties] will try to take up an infrastructure package early in the year. Smarter design through infrastructure is one of the things we can stress to both Republicans and Democrats.
Turner: Democrats are clearly in favor of a strong infrastructure bill, and they will continue to be. Resilience is one issue on which we can bring Republicans and Democrats together in Congress, for many reasons. If you look at the increased number and intensity of storms hitting the Gulf Coast, if you look at the threat of hurricanes and wildfires, there are so many different members of Congress who are affected by all of this. I believe when you talk about bipartisan cooperation, this is an area where we should be able to do some good. Resilience is something that will save money for the federal government. The other helpful angle is there are a lot of special interest groups—including builders and providers of building products—who are innovating and producing more resilient products for buildings, [which increases potential support for] tax incentives to incorporate those products. Lots of players have an interest, financial and otherwise, in trying to make America more resilient to climate threats. I think we can do some good, and architects can see some wins in this area.
