Green Building Law Blog

Green Building Law--Battle of the Blogs

Today, my co-conspirator and green building blog buddy over at Green Building Law Update criticized a post I wrote a few weeks back on Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle vetoing a green building bill that mandated 15% of gross square footage of state space to be LEED certified.  The essence of Chris' piece is that

The Governor properly vetoed spending state funds to certify public buildings as green.

Except, that's not why he vetoed the bill.  He vetoed it because it requires all moneys available for use by the building commission to be devoted to making state buildings green.

In his letter to the senate he stated:

[The requirement that all moneys be used for greening buildings] will result in all current maintenance projects being delayed indefinitely.  In the future, the commitment of all these funds for this single purpose will also sharply curtain the state's ability to build new building or maintain its existing facilities. 

In short, he vetoed it because it was too expensive and that money should be used for building new, non-green facilities or repairing old ones in a non-green manner.

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Comments (1) Read through and enter the discussion with the form at the end
Jerome L. Garciano - June 23, 2010 2:42 PM

I think the bill language is unclear. What does "achieve certification by the U.S. Green Building Council" mean? Were the funds supposed to be designated only for costs of certification or for costs to make existing buildings green?
Anyway, this is of course about money. Was there some sort of analysis of the costs/benefits done?

Shari Shapiro, Esq., LEED AP
Suite 300, Liberty View, 457 Haddonfield Road, P.O. Box 5459
Cherry Hill, NJ 08002-2220,