Is there a ‘secretive’ group manipulating the General Assembly?

By Rick Sincere | Saturday, December 31st, 2011 | Policy

Earlier this week, the Washington Post‘s Richmond correspondent, Anita Kumar, wrote an article that seems designed to frighten readers about shadowy conspiracies enveloping Virginia’s legislative process.

Pointing out that some legislation introduced in the Virginia General Assembly has “been pushed by a conservative group that ghostwrites bills for legislators across the nation,” Kumar reveals that members of the House of Delegates and state Senate have submitted bills that “are identical to model legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a pro-business, free-market group.”

That model legislation must be a closely-held secret, since it is only through this coded language on ALEC’s web site that one can find out its true mission:

For more than 35 years, ALEC has been the ideal means of creating and delivering public policy ideas aimed at protecting and expanding our free society. Thanks to ALEC’s membership, the duly elected leaders of their state legislatures, Jeffersonian principles advise and inform legislative action across the country. Literally hundreds of dedicated ALEC members have worked together to create, develop, introduce and guide to enactment many of the cutting-edge, conservative policies that have now become the law in the states. The strategic knowledge and training ALEC members have received over the years has been integral to these victories.

To get more information, I had to do nothing more strenuous than to reach to my bookshelf and pull out two volumes of ALEC’s biennial Source Book of American State Legislation. The introduction to one of them says:

The 1987-88 edition of The Source Book of American State Legislation features eleven sections addressing such issues as tort reform, financial services deregulation, privatization, drug abuse, trade development, and solid waste disposal. A total of fifty-nine proposals are offered for your consideration….

All model proposals featured in The 1987-88 Source Book are the product of ALEC’s unique joint committees, the State Legislator Task Forces and Private Sector Coordinating Councils. These bipartisan committees comprised of over 200 state legislators and private sector leaders worked in tandem throughout 1986 to select and develop model proposals….

Similarly, the 1989-90 Source Book includes just over 50 pieces of model legislation.

Does a shadowy, behind-the-scenes influence pedlar publish, over a period longer than a quarter-century, its conspiratorial products in books that anyone can read?  When the content of those books is developed in committees consisting of more than 200 people?  (Benjamin Franklin once quipped that three men can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.)

It should be noted that ALEC no longer publishes its model legislation in books printed every two years. It publishes its model bills on its web site.

The idea that the American Legislative Exchange Council is “secretive” (a word used in the Washington Post article to describe ALEC) is nonsense.

What’s even more ridiculous is the implication that ALEC’s influence is out of proportion.

Kumar writes:

ALEC, as the group is known, has seen seven of its bills passed by the Virginia General Assembly, including measures on education, taxes and health care, according to the study, conducted by the liberal group ProgressVA. One of the resulting laws laid the groundwork for Virginia’s legal challenge of the federal health-care law passed in 2010.

Later in the article, she writes:

The Center for Media and Democracy released a report, ALEC Exposed, in July, documenting more than 800 model bills pushed by ALEC and introduced in state legislatures across the nation. The center received copies of the bills from a whistleblower.

Why it would be necessary to get publicly available documents from a whistleblower is a question for another day. Instead, pay attention to that number: 800.

ALEC had 800 model bills. Seven of them were passed by the Virginia General Assembly.

That’s a success rate of 0.08 per cent.

But wait, there’s more.

According to Richmond Sunlight, during the 2011 General Assembly session, there were 2,968 bills proposed.

Seven out of 2,968. That’s a success rate of 0.023 per cent.

Thus it is that the American Legislative Exchange Council is a threat to democracy. Even the 1962 New York Mets did better.

Tags: