About ALEC Exposed

ALEC Exposed is a project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

Here is a note about ALEC and this new site, from CMD's Executive Director, Lisa Graves:

In April, some of the biggest corporations in the U.S. met behind closed doors in Cincinnati about their wish lists for changing state laws. This exchange was part of a series of corporate meetings nurtured and fueled by the Koch Industries family fortune and other corporations.

At an extravagant hotel gilded just before the Great Depression, corporate executives from the tobacco giant Reynolds, State Farm Insurance, and other corporations were joined by their “co-chairs”—all Republican state legislators—to approve “model” legislation. They jointly head “task forces” of what is called the “American Legislative Exchange Council” (ALEC).

There, as the Center for Media and Democracy has learned, these corporate-politician committees secretly voted on bills to rewrite numerous state laws. And, according to the newly revealed ALEC documents, corporations vote as an “equal” with elected politicians on these bills.

The legal rules targeted by these task forces reach into almost every area of American life: worker and consumer rights, education, the rights of Americans injured or killed by corporations, taxes, health care, immigration, and the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink. The Center obtained a copy of more than 800 “model” bills approved by companies through ALEC meetings, after one of the thousands of people with access shared them, and a whistleblower provided a copy to the Center.

The bills voted on this spring by ALEC corporate leaders, and other companies and politicians, now head to a luxury hotel in the French Quarter for ALEC’s national retreat in August. In New Orleans, Koch Industries—through its chief lobbyist—and lobbyists of other global companies are slated for a “joint board meeting” with a rookery of Republican legislators to approve the bills.

Before the bills are publicly introduced in state legislatures by ALEC politicians or alumni in the governor’s offices, they will be cleansed of any reference to the secret voting or who really wrote them. With CMD’s publication of the bills, the public can pierce through some of the subterfuge about ALEC, and see what the bills really say alongside the names of corporations that lead or have helped lead ALEC's agenda.

Many of the bills have obvious financial benefits for corporations but little or no direct benefit to the constituents that a particular legislator was elected to represent. Still, it may be tempting to dismiss ALEC as merely institutionalizing business as usual for lobbyists—except that ALEC’s tax-free donations are predicated on it not spending a substantial amount of time lobbying. ALEC has publicly claimed its “unparalleled” success in terms of the number of model bills introduced and enacted. But, seeing the text of the bills helps reveal the actual language of legal changes ALEC corporations desire, beyond what can be known by the PR in the title of the bills. As ALEC says, it has created a “unique” partnership between corporations and politicians.

But it is a worrisome one, which seems to normalize a kind of corruption of the legislative process. The full sweep of the bills, their implications for America’s future, the corporate voting, and the extent of the corporate subsidy of ALEC all raise substantial questions for Americans concerned about our democracy and direction.

We hope you will join in the study of these bills and the people and companies behind ALEC.