Politico’s Mike Allen publishes a daily run-down on the happenings in Washington called the “Playbook,” in which he boils down the news of the day into salient tidbits that fit easily on your smartphone screen. However, he missed the call on a Bloomberg article sounding the drumbeat against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive organization that facilitates meetings between corporate executives and state legislatures to help shepherd corporate-written bills into law.
The “seat at the legislative drafting table” is in fact exactly what it sounds like, and the process is detailed in a PFAW report. Corporate representatives, or “task-force members,” sit down with state legislators and hand them “model bills” to introduce in their respective statehouses. The result is myriad, nearly identical, extremely specialized and pro-corporate bills being introduced in legislatures around the country that carry serious repercussions for the environment, consumer safety, and working families – all for the sake of these corporations’ bottom line. Needless to say, ALEC member companies pay handsomely for this privilege.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN – “Koch, Exxon Mobil Among Corporations Helping Write State Laws,” by Bloomberg’s Alison Fitzgerald: “Koch Industries Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. are among companies that would benefit from almost identical energy legislation introduced in state capitals from Oregon to New Mexico … The energy companies helped write the legislation at a meeting organized by a group they finance, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a [state government] policy institute known as ALEC. The corporations, both ALEC members, took a seat at the legislative drafting table beside elected officials and policy analysts by paying a fee between $3,000 and $10,000.” The legislation pressures govs to leave the Western Climate Initiative, a regional carbon cap and trade program. http://bloom.bg/prxOw4
—PLAYBOOK TRANSLATION: The collusion turns out to be a think tank’s model legislation, called up on the web by like-minded legislators. The “seat at the legislative drafting table” turns out to be foundation donations or annual-meeting sponsorships.
ALEC is perhaps one of the gravest threats facing our democracy today – and sugarcoating their secretive workings does no favor to the American people.