2015 Directory

12 WYOMING ARCHITECTURE .15 | www.aia-wyoming.org Government Advocacy Committee Keeping an Eye on Legislation T he Advocacy Committee keeps an eye on Legislative or Gov- ernment issues which affect our profession. During the 4th quarter of 2014 after approval by the AIA Wyoming mem- bership at the fall meeting in Jackson our committee worked closely with Legislators and the Legislative Service Office to draft legislation defining the requirements of residency as it pertained to Architects. This bill did not give any financial advantage to Wyoming Residents but only defined the requirements of residency which followed the Contractors requirements. T he bill was introduced into committee at this past year’s Legislative Secession however, it did not make it out of the committee to be brought to the floor. This was a new experience for all of us and we learned a lot. We will not try to present this bill to the Legislator this coming year as it is a budget session so it will be 2017 before it is reintroduced. The Advocacy Committee feels that in our first attempt the Legis- lators and others were not well educated on what the Legislation intended. We will need to do a much better job with education next time and will be asking the membership of AIA for help in the educa- tion process. We also participated with National in a campaign to extend and update the Energy Efficient Commercial Building Tax Deduction (§179D), which expired at the end of 2014. In this effort a letter was sent to Senator Mike Enzi expressing our support. Although the Sen- ator did not support or vote in favor of, it did pass out of Committee. Mike Potter of our committee attended the SGN meeting held in Jackson June 25 and 26 and he came back with a lot of good informa- tion about what is going on nationally. Many of the topics apply to us locally and there will be more to come on this in the future. If anyone hears of Government or Legislative action that could affect our profession please let one of the Advocacy Committee members know and we will gladly track it down. b BY CHARLIE VAN OVER, AIA, CHAIR Members of Government Advocacy Committee: Charlie Van Over, AIA - Chair Mike Potter, AIA Lyle Murtha, AIA Cornelius Kinsey, AIA Colleen Nelson, AIA Randy Hein, AIA