Robert Hablitzel, President of California State Board of Landscape Architects, notices a general political perception that licensing boards are not a necessary function of government. According to Hablitzel, “In the last year, a California Senate Committee, California Assembly Committee, and the State Political Watch Dog Committee (the Little Hoover Commission) have made strong suggestions that licensing boards should be greatly reorganized or eliminated. California has the largest number of licensed landscape architects, but has one of the smaller Boards which makes us very vulnerable.”

“Landscape Architects spend little of their organizational efforts (being) politically active. Next year, the first California ASLA Annual Meeting will be held in Sacramento. The responsibilities and necessity of licensing Landscape Architects and eliminating that identity crisis rest with each and every landscape architect,” says Hablitzel.

“Current direction is to review small government agencies such as the Board of Landscape Architects. Those that would be threatened would be the consumers, with no place to take their complaints against a licensee or seek information on the potential use of a licensed professional of this Board. This Board ensures licensure of a profession that is the design guardian of our environment, water conservation, resource management, erosion control, fire management, as well as many other elements specific to one’s area of design,” reports Hablitzel.

“California State licenses landscape architects by testing them,” says Hablitzel. (This year’s pass/fail rate is up to 40%). “After six years education and/or experience, a three day exam is held; once that is passed, licenses are issued. Forty other states license architects and the state boards’ goals include protecting consumers and licensing professional architects.”

“A legislative analyst has come out with a report distributed to the legislature recommending abolishment of the Board of Landscape Architects,” explains Hablitzel. “The reports are written before legislature convenes to determine which groups to write legislation about. That’s why we feel there is a crisis situation and action needs to be taken.”

Jeanne Brode, Executive Officer of the State Board states, “The groups that have invaded these two committees are the San Diego Public Interest Law Center and the Little Hoover Commission. The Senate Business & Professions Committee under Senator Joseph Montoya, and Assembly Committee on Government Efficiency & Consumer Protection, chaired by Delaine Eastland, have set a hearing for December 8.”

“These committees think there are too many regulatory boards, so they will simplistically go about eliminating or merging and go back to their district and report how much money they saved for legislation,” explains Brode. “If they determined that California State Licensure should be eliminated, there could already be a piece of legislation backed by committees, both Democrat and Republican.”

“Our chances of killing it would be far more difficult than before, so we have a war of crisis intervention. We need landscape architects to contact their legislators to make themselves known?EUR??,,????'??? that we’re doing a good job even though we’re small,” urges Brode.