An Atlanta, Georgia television station has made national news with its fantastic
investigative reporting on the conservative "corporate bill mill," ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. The station's Brendan Keefe followed Georgia state legislators to a resort hotel in Savannah last week, trying to find out what they were doing in closed door meetings where he, as a credentialed reporter, was not allowed. He had to go to a former member of ALEC to find out.
"It's really a corporate bill mill," said Sen. Nan Orrock, an Atlanta Democrat who has served in both houses of the Georgia General Assembly for years. "They're cranking out legislation, putting it into the hands of legislators who go back and file it."
Orrock would know. She was once a member of ALEC.
"The corporations that are there have equal standing with the legislators," Sen. Orrock said.
"You mean they can vote?" we asked.
"They absolutely can vote, and truth be told, they write the bills," she answered, referring to the lobbyists.
When trying to verify that with in-person reporting, Keefe was turned away and, in fact, "kicked out with the aid of off-duty police officers on orders from ALEC staff." But not before seeing Bethanne Cooley, Director of State Legislative Affairs for CTIA—the Wireless Association in the room—talking to Georgia Rep. Ben Harbin. Cooley is not a registered lobbyist in Georgia, but here she was working with that state's lawmakers. Under the auspices of ALEC, a non-profit educational 501(c)3, Cooley talking about or even actually writing legislation—which is what ALEC does—doesn't have to be reported as lobbying, and neither does the "scholarship" money they provide to legislators to travel to these meetings, or the food and drink and hotel costs that are covered. When the station tried an open records request to get receipts and reimbursement records for legislators' travel to ALEC-sponsored events, they were denied.
But the reporter was able to complete an extensive report on how ALEC operates, and where state legislators fit in. He used the example of Georgia's Asbestos Claims Priorities Act which "severely limits who can file asbestos claims against corporations in the state," as an industry-backed piece of legislation that was passed in 2007, and introduced by legislators who received thousands from ALEC that same year to go to meetings. He compared the ALEC-written suggested legislation, cooked up at a conference in Las Vegas that year, to what was introduced in Georgia and found much of it was copied word for word.
None of this is news to people who have been following ALEC closely over the years, but it is monumentally instructive for a local news organization to walk its viewers through the process and to show them how much of the governing in their state is done with voters left completely in the dark. It demonstrates starkly just how much control ALEC's corporate bosses have over what happens in state houses across the country.