While both the Legislature and the Administration both were in strong support of environmentally sound legislation this year, two bills that would have taken the authority out of the state’s hands for the regulation of green buildings were vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger last week.

Both AB 35 (Ruskin) and AB 888 (Lieu) would have granted authority to the United States Green Building Council, a private entity, to establish building standards known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED); and not the California Building Standards Commission (CBSC) and ongoing efforts with their Green Building Code Advisory Committee within the CBSC to establish such standards.

“Allowing private entities, such as proposed in this bill, to dictate California's building standards usurps the state’s authority to develop and adopt those standards and could compromise the health and safety of Californians,” stated Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his veto message.

The CSU has a longstanding record of exemplary stewardship with sustainable building standards. Our CSU Program for Environmental Responsibility (CSU-PER) was created to develop specific guidelines to integrate sustainable building practices into our capital program. CSU-PER is a comprehensive program that encourages and monitors responsible decisions and actions during integrated planning, design, construction and operation of our state and non-state capital projects.

While the CSU continues to make strides in this area of environmental awareness, the system opposed both measures due to their lack of reflection to other programs such as the CSU-PER that offered equivalent standards to those proposed by the legislation.