“The rightwing group Alec is preparing to launch a new nationwide network that will seek to replicate its current influence within state legislatures in city councils and municipalities,” The Guardian reported earlier this month.
The American Legislative Exchange Council, founded in 1973, is one of the nation’s most pervasive and influential groups lobbying for the unrestrained power of big business to the detriment of everything else in the form of “model bills” designed to rewrite laws in sweeping moves and, like cancer cells, replicate themselves everywhere possible.
As a “corporate bill mill,” the group has been seminal in the spreading of Florida’s controversial “stand-your-ground” gun law to more than 20 states.
“Now the council is looking to take its blueprint for influence over statewide lawmaking and drill it down to the local level,” Guardian reporter Ed Pilkington wrote. “It has already quietly set up, and is making plans for the public launch of, an offshoot called the American City County Exchange (ACCE) that will target policymakers from ‘villages, towns, cities and counties.’
“The new organisation will offer corporate America a direct conduit into the policy making process of city councils and municipalities. Lobbyists acting on behalf of major businesses will be able to propose resolutions and argue for new profit-enhancing legislation in front of elected city officials, who will then return to their council chambers and seek to implement the proposals.”
