Through the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called "model bills" reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. In ALEC's own words, corporations have "a VOICE and a VOTE" on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU?
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ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.
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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a 501(c)(3) American organization composed of conservative legislators, businesses and foundations which produces model legislation for state legislatures and promotes free-market and conservative ideas. According to the organization's website, members share a common belief that "government closest to the people" is "fundamentally more effective, more just, and a better guarantor of freedom than the distant, bloated federal government in Washington, D.C." The organization has been described as a "collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators."
ALEC provides a forum for corporations and legislators to collaborate on "model bills"—draft legislation which the members would like to become law. The model bills are then introduced by ALEC's legislative members, and approximately 200 per year become law. ALEC has produced model legislation on issues such as reducing corporate regulation and taxation, tightening voter identification rules, minimizing environmental protections, and promoting gun rights. ALEC also serves as a networking tool among state legislators, allowing them to research the handling and "best practices" of policy in other states.
ALEC's membership list and the origin of its model bills were not disclosed; BusinessWeek wrote that "part of ALEC's mission is to present industry-backed legislation as grass-roots work."
