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More ALEC News

The ALEC-Backed War on Local Democracy After the town of Denton, Texas passed a ballot initiative banning fracking in November 2014, the oil and gas industry reacted with outrage and swiftly filed suit. Politicians in the state capitol responded with a fusillade of bills to preempt local authority over public health and safety and to subject local ballot initiatives to pre-approval by the state attorney general. There was even a bill to end local home rule altogether. Read the rest of this item here. ALEC, NFIB Push Prevailing Wage Repeal As unions and working people battle "right-to-work" legislation in several states, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and allies have opened another flank in their war on good jobs. Targeted this time are state prevailing wage laws, which require public construction projects to support local wage standards instead of undercutting them. Studies have repeatedly found that prevailing wage laws do not harm taxpayers but are effective in providing something increasingly rare in regional labor markets, upward pressure on wages. Read the rest of this item here. BP Dumps ALEC; Tally at 102 BP announced that it was cutting ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, the controversial corporate bill mill. It is the third major fossil fuel company to sever ties with ALEC, after Occidental Petroleum in 2014. ExxonMobil remains on the ALEC private sector board. As of March 2015, at least 102 corporations and 19 non-profits--for a total of 121 private sector members--have publicly announced that they cut ties with ALEC. You can see a full list of companies that have cut ties here. Read the rest of this item here. “Death by a Thousand Cuts” and ALEC’s Local Strategy for Attacking Unions The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) made headlines after Wisconsin Republicans introduced a virtually word-for-word copy of the ALEC “model” Right to Work Act, following on the heels of Michigan and other states that have taken up the ALEC-inspired anti-union measures in recent years. But ALEC and its allies have also been pushing a new and unprecedented approach to defunding unions on a city-by-city basis through an ALEC offshoot, the American City County Exchange (ACCE). Read the rest of this item here. ACCE Wants Your Town to Subsidize ALEC-Style Corporate Lobbying As the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported previously, the American City County Exchange (ACCE) was formed in 2014 as a local government version of the state legislature-focused American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The new group's structure mimics its parent organization, with corporate lobbyists paying between $10,000 and $25,000 to sit side-by-side with city and county elected officials and vote on legislation that all too frequently benefits ALEC's corporate members. Read the rest of this item here.