Photo by Meghan Montgomery / Built Work Photography, Weber Thompson

Advocacy Update – October 2026

This Month in Advocacy: Update Seattle Green Building Incentives; Comp Plan Delays; Budget Season Updates; NCARB Pathways to Practice; and Protection for Small Firms

AIA Seattle Ten-County Area

Sign on to ask the City of Seattle to update and expand Green Building Incentives

In support of AIA Seattle’s Climate Imperative, we invite organizations and firms to join us in asking the City of Seattle to update and expand the Green Building Incentive and Living Building Pilot programs. While Seattle is a national leader in sustainable building policy, many of the city’s incentive programs were developed under market conditions that no longer reflect today’s construction costs, financing environment, or regulatory landscape. Updating these programs would help ensure that high-performance low-carbon buildings remain financially viable while advancing the City’s climate commitments. Learn more and sign on to the letter here by October 26. Please reach out to Rachel Gilchrist, AIA Seattle Advocacy Manager, with questions.

Seattle Centers & Corridors legislation delayed another year

At a briefing for the Seattle Planning Commission last week, City staff shared that the Centers & Corridors legislation (phase two of the Comprehensive Plan) will be delayed another nine to twelve months. The state’s Growth Management Board recently ruled that OPCD must expand the scope of their Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to include “maximum possible development.” More coverage of the delay and potential impacts on Mayor Wilson’s “Taller, Denser, Faster” plan here.

Budget season across the region

Last month, Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson released her first budget proposal, which implements cuts to many departments, including terminating vacant positions, but avoids new taxes to help close the General Fund deficit. The Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection (SDCI) proposed budget includes a 10.7% increase in building and land use permit fees, in response to a significant decline in master use permits and a shift in construction permits toward smaller projects.

King County Executive Girmay Zahilay also released a supplemental budget, which includes investments in affordable housing, infrastructure maintenance and modernization, RapidRide expansion and conservation funding. Both Seattle City Council and King County Council will now review, amend, and gather public comment before voting on the final proposals. The next Seattle public comment opportunity will take place on November 5; learn more about how to engage here. You can also review department budget presentations online, including OPCD, SDCI, and Office of Housing.

Opportunities in Bellevue

Thank you to the members who joined us at the AIA Seattle Eastside Happy Hour in September! AIA Seattle continues to identify opportunities to engage in advocacy across our 10-county area. For members who work or live in Bellevue, the City is asking for feedback to help inform development of a pre-approved plans program for middle housing. Bellevue is also hosting a Residential Permitting Expo on October 17 and seeking applicants for its Planning Commission by October 23. Please reach out to Rachel Gilchrist with questions or suggestions regarding advocacy outside Seattle.

Washington State

The future of licensure: NCARB at the State Board on October 22

A representative from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) will attend the Washington State Board for Architects meeting on October 22 at 10am to discuss Pathways to Practice, NCARB’s effort to reshape the path to architectural licensure.

This meeting is a chance to hear directly from NCARB about where this work stands. If you’d like to weigh in, the board takes public comment at the end of the meeting. You can access the meeting here and learn more at NCARB’s Pathways to Practice page.

Share your ideas on housing production with the Department of Commerce

The Washington State Department of Commerce has invited AIAWA members to participate in the Washington Accelerator for Residential Production (WARP), an effort funded in the 2026 supplemental capital budget to develop recommendations for increasing the speed and volume of housing production in Washington. Commerce is hosting a series of virtual meetings through February and are open to any AIAWA member. Some of the ideas they’ve asked for input on include:

Statewide permit-ready plans for a range of housing types, and what it would take to make them work
Housing models that are less expensive to build, including what they would look like and cost
Affordable kit homes and cost-effective, code-compliant prefab housing

To view the full schedule or register for a meeting, visit the WARP project website. You can also send your ideas directly via email. For more information, contact AIAWA.

National

AIA Urges SBA to Protect Small Architecture Firms in Size Standards Overhaul

AIA submitted comments to the U.S. Small Business Administration opposing a proposed increase in the size standard for Architectural Services from $12.5 million to $135 million. AIA warned that such a dramatic expansion could place genuinely small architecture firms in direct competition with substantially larger companies for small business set-aside contracts. AIA urged SBA to adopt a more measured, architecture-specific approach, conduct additional analysis of the proposal’s competitive impacts, and ensure that efforts to address the “graduation cliff” do not undermine meaningful federal contracting opportunities for truly small firms.

AIA Supports School Infrastructure Modernization Act

AIA joins partners in the education, health and preservation spaces to support the reintroduction of the School Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2026. The bill would modernize aging school buildings across the U.S. by expanding access to the federal historic rehabilitation tax credit (HTC). It would allow schools districts to use the credit in partnering with private entities to finance renovations to historic school buildings.