Gene Strandberg, Gilpin County. Conservative talk-show hosts tell their listeners ALEC is just a lobbying organization. Let’s see.

ALEC is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and calls itself a bipartisan public and private partnership, according to the Center for Media and Democracy and ALECexposed.org. The public part consists of approximately 2,000 state legislators, 99 percent of which are Republican. The private part consists of about 300 corporations, corporate trade groups and corporate foundations.

Officials can lie to the public, and nominees can lie to Congress, all without consequences. This column in The Mountain-Ear will show how we got to this point. What starts here in our little section of Colorado, might make the truth fashionable again and pull Democracy back from the brink!

 To join ALEC, Legislators pay $100 for a two-year membership. Private members pay from $7,000 to $25,000 per year. ALEC has nine task forces responsible for writing legislation: 1. Civil Justice; 2. Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development; 3. Communications and Technology; 4. Education; 5. Energy, Environment, and Agriculture; 6. Health and Human Services; 7. International Relations; 8. Justice Performance Project; 9. Tax and Fiscal Policy, according to ALECexposed.org.

By paying an additional $2,500 to $10,000 per year to join a task force, corporations can participate in writing their own legislation. Legislators receive all-expenses-paid trips, called ‘scholarships,’ to Task Force Summits at luxury resorts around the country, families included. 

For example, for the 2006 Spring summit at Coeur d’Alene Resort, Summer Summit at San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Winter summit at JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa the ALEC bill totaled $634,791, according to ALECexposed.org. That total is only to reimburse attendees for travel, lodging, food and drink, but doesn’t include what corporations paid to entertain legislators during the trip. 

ALEC typically produces about 1,000 corporate-friendly bills every year, which legislators take home and introduce as their own ideas. About 200 of these become law, which are a benefit to corporations but a detriment to the public.

Tommy Thompson, former ALEC member, former Wisconsin Governor, former George W. Bush Cabinet member says, “Myself, I always loved going to (ALEC) meetings, because I always found new ideas. Then I’d take them back to Wisconsin, disguise them a little bit, and declare that, ‘It’s mine’.”

Wisconsin will be our example for ALEC’s procedure in the states. Wisconsin’s 2011-2012 legislative session included at least 32 bills or budget items with an ALEC origin. They included voter ID laws, bills to ban lawsuits for death or injury from prescription drugs, bills to restrict union dues collection, bills to help the tobacco industry and bills to limit telecomm regulation. Twenty-one of those bills are now law in Wisconsin, according to ALECexposed.org.

Officially, Wisconsin has a zero-tolerance policy concerning gifts to lawmakers, but from 2006-2008, ALEC spent almost $117,000 to pay for Wisconsin legislators to attend resort meetings with corporate lobbyists. A Wisconsin State Representative introduced a bill that would force legislators to list their ALEC “scholarship” money on disclosure forms. The bill was referred to the Committee on Assembly Organization on February 23, 2012. No action was taken. The committee was chaired by two ALEC members.

In 2010. PhRMA, the largest trade group of drug manufacturers, gave more than $350,000 to ALEC, according to ALECexposed.org. It was told to send the money to Wisconsin, the street address of Amy Boyer, ALEC’s corporate co-chair for Wisconsin and a lobbyist for Koch Industries and other energy corporations. 

The goal of most ALEC bills is to lower corporate taxes, decrease regulation and protect against lawsuits, all of which increase profits. Specific bills have been written to:

Make it harder to vote

Make it harder for unions to organize

Stop essential benefits for workers

Promote trade laws that outsource jobs

Limit damages for dangerous products

Block efforts to address climate change

Limit rules that protect air and water

Privatize schools and prisons

Oppose Wall Street reforms

Oppose health insurance reforms

Stop limits on banking fees

Oppose taxes on windfall oil profits

Oppose limits on machine guns

Oppose taxes on investment income

Privatize Social Security and Medicaid

The Center for Media and Democracy and their outstanding project ALECexposed.org is the go-to place to learn about all things ALEC.

(Originally published in the October 24, 2019, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)