ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling cited an organization policy against disclosing members and donors but balked at environmentalists' suggestion that it promotes "climate denial." The organization does not weigh in on the science of man-made warning, he said, any more than it does on "jelly beans."
This article was originally published on E&E News
Advocates push eBay to drop ALEC membership
Jean Chemnick, E&E reporter
Published: Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Eighty nonprofits amped up pressure on eBay yesterday to sever ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, arguing that the conservative advocacy group's work is inconsistent with eBay's stance on issues including climate change.
The coalition -- which includes the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters, among many others -- signed aletter calling on the online auction company to distance itself from the Koch Industries-linked ALEC, as other tech companies have recently done. EBay's continued membership in ALEC is at odds with its corporate efforts to promote low-carbon energy and to boost lobbying transparency, they argued.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo have all dropped their ALEC membership in the past weeks, the letter says, in response to the advocacy group's policy stances but also to "its secretive practices, and its effort to treat what most people consider a lobbying operation as a 'charitable' activity" (Greenwire, Oct. 1).
The letter cites three complaints to the Internal Revenue Service that contributions to ALEC should not be treated as charitable donations but as contributions to a political advocacy group. ALEC acts as a clearinghouse for conservative, pro-industry policy models, which can be found on its website.
Brad Bauman, a spokesman for the coalition, said "ALEC's work is squarely out of sync with eBay's corporate culture" on clean energy, climate change and net neutrality, "but even more so, it's lack of transparency, which is of particular interest to eBay's chairman, Pierre Omidyar, who has been a leader in the fight for government and political transparency."
The eBay chief's philanthropic investment firm, the Omidyar Network, promotes government transparency efforts around the world.
Bauman called ALEC the "smoky backroom of politics, pairing politicians and corporate lobbyists behind closed doors to write legislation that doesn't benefit the communities that those politicians supposedly serve."
ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling cited an organization policy against disclosing members and donors but balked at environmentalists' suggestion that it promotes "climate denial." The organization does not weigh in on the science of man-made warning, he said, any more than it does on "jelly beans." Instead, he said, ALEC promotes the paring back of government mandates, including for renewable energy and carbon reduction.
"We don't want the government to be in the position of picking winners and losers, or artificially inflating a specific sector over another sector," Meierling said.
Rather than pressuring companies to drop out of ALEC, Meierling invited environmentalists to join it themselves.
"They should come in and disagree reasonably and share their perspectives with people," he said.
The companies that have abandoned ALEC in recent months have been more than offset by new corporate members attracted to its work on tax policy, commerce, health care and education, said Meierling. He did not list the group's work on energy and climate policy as a particular draw and said no new members have joined ALEC's energy task force in the last two weeks.
The current wave of ALEC defections began two weeks ago when Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt announced his company's departure during an NPR interview, accusing ALEC of "literally lying" about man-made climate change.