Last week, hundreds of state legislators gathered to meet with corporate lobbyists at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
The group bringing them together: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
At the ALEC meetings, corporate lobbyists draft legislation — to roll back renewable energy standards, to pass right to work laws, to privatize education, to pass stand your ground laws — and the legislators take the model bills back to their states and seek to pass them into law.
It’s been a model that has worked remarkably well — until 2011, when the Center for Media and Democracy launched a project called ALEC Exposed.
And ever since, more than 90 corporations have pulled out of ALEC and their revenues have dipped 20 percent in the last year.
That’s according to Brendan Fischer, general counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy.
“In the spring of 2011, a whistleblower came to us with over 800 of ALEC’s previous secret model bills,” Fischer told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “And only then could we begin to connect the dots. We could begin to identify the ALEC Model Voter ID Act and how it served as a template for the voter ID bills that were introduced in a majority of states in 2011.”
“We later saw the stand your ground law that was passed in Florida and the controversy that resulted in the Trayvon Martin case and then spread across the country. And there were a variety of attacks on collective bargaining rights, efforts to privatize education, efforts to roll back renewable portfolio standards.”
“It was because the whistleblower came to us with these bills that we were able to identify the breadth of ALEC’s influence over state law and policy, for the most part without anybody knowing.”
“ALEC has been described as a corporate bill mill. They are a conduit for facilitating corporate influence over state law and policy. They bring together state legislators and corporate interests. Those corporate interests hand state legislators model bills that benefit the corporate bottom line.”
“ALEC counts around 2,000 state legislators as members and a variety of global corporations like Koch Industries and Altria/Philip Morris, Exxon/Mobil, BP and the insurance industry — as well as groups and organizations that benefit from the privatization of education — companies like K12 Inc.”
What impact has your activism had on ALEC’s funding?
“It has been pretty significant,” Fischer says.
“ALEC released its most recent filing just a few weeks ago. And it showed ALEC’s financial support dropped 19 percent in 2013 compared to 2012. That was on top of additional losses ALEC saw in 2012. ALEC ended 2013 with a $1.2 million deficit. And this was in large part because of these corporations dropping their membership.”
“We count around 90 firms that have cut ties from ALEC since we started our activism in 2011.”
That’s 90 out of how many members?
“Out of a few hundred — we don’t have a precise number.”
Was the whistleblower who came to you with the original documents — has that person come forth publicly or not?
“No.”
Was it an anonymous dump of documents? Or do you know the person?
“I don’t. It’s a whistleblower who came to us –”
Does anyone in your organization know who that is?
“I can’t really say.”
“A big part of what we have done is to bring transparency to the process,” Fishcer said. “We have been able to shine the spotlight on ALEC. As a result, many companies have pulled out. ALEC has been around for 40 years. And for the most part, you couldn’t track ALEC’s influence. These bills were kept secret.”
“When the whistleblower came to us and we published the information online, you could begin to connect the dots. We published the bills online.”
“We compiled a list of known ALEC legislators. ALEC doesn’t publish such a list, but we were able to identify many of the ALEC members through public records requests and other means.”
“We also did in depth research into the ALEC scholarship scheme, which is one of the ways that corporate interests give gifts to ALEC legislators so that they can attend these ALEC meetings. These are the same corporate members that benefit from the introduction and passage of ALEC model legislation. They are paying for the flights and hotel rooms for the legislators.”
Have you looked at the legality of ALEC giving money to legislators to go on these junkets?
“It’s a state by state issue,” Fishcer said. “In some states, you have seen legislatures create an explicit exception in the ethics laws for the acceptance of these gifts to attend ALEC meetings. In other states like in Wisconsin, we did challenge the legality of these gifts. We had a strong complaint. The ALEC members in the state then started talking about dismantling the ethics board and replacing it with partisan appointees instead of non partisan appointees. The ethics board then largely rejected our complaint, although it did acknowledge that many legislators were not properly disclosing receipt of these ALEC scholarships.”
There has been no action against a legislator for accepting ALEC gifts?
“Not that I’m aware of. Although we know that ALEC has expressed some concern that state ethics boards are looking at this more closely.”
Do you get to go to these ALEC conferences?
“We will be present. And we will be present trying to provide an informed perspective on what ALEC is and how they operate. But ALEC is not a transparent organization.”
Will you be at the hotel this week?
“I will not be,” Fischer says. “But plenty of people will be. We will be present, but ALEC will not allow us in their meeting. Their meetings are closed door. They are designed to allow lobbyists to influence state legislators. And they are going to be more successful at that when there are fewer skeptical prying eyes.”
“In the past, ALEC has kicked reporters out of their meetings, including reporters from the Washington Post and the Toronto Star. They have been saying they are becoming more transparent. And they may be allowing more reporters in their meetings. But that remains to be seen. And it also remains to be seen what parts of the meetings the reporters will be allowed to attend.”
Are they just not letting reporters in? Or are they letting them in and then kicking them out?
“It has been both. At last year’s meeting in Washington, D.C. they denied credentials to Al-Jazeera and to Mother Jones. We found a face sheet with a number of faces from our organization and the Nation magazine. And they directed their staff not to give credentials to people on the face sheet.”
“They did give credentials to some reporters last year — like Dana Milbank from the Washington Post. But when he tried to attend one of the task force meetings, they kicked him out. Even though he was credentialed to attend some parts of the meeting, they wouldn’t allow him into one of the task force meetings where the business actually gets done.”
Do people from your staff show up?
“We have tried in the past. We have consistently been booted from the meetings. Last year, one person from our staff — Nick Surgey — actually applied at the media registration desk. And they did give him credentials to watch Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin’s keynote address. They gave him credentials. And then somebody higher up recognized that they had just given credentials to somebody from Center for Media and Democracy. And they chased Nick down with a police officer. They demanded that he turn over the credentials that he was given. And the justification for that was because he might write about it. Usually, when you give press credentials to somebody it is because they intend to report on it. But that was apparently not something they were going to allow to happen, if it was an organization like ours.”
[For the complete q/a format Interview with Brendan Fischer, see 28 Corporate Crime Reporter 47(12), December 8, 2014, print edition only.]