Inside ALEC: How Corporations Ghost-Write Anti-Consumer State Telecom Legislation
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the latest corporate response to campaign finance and lobbying reform — a Washington, D.C.-based “middle man” that brings lawmakers and corporate interests together while obfuscating the obvious conflict of interest to voters back home if they realized what was going on.
ALEC focuses on state laws its corporate members detest because, in many cases, they represent the only regulatory obstacles left after more than two decades of deregulatory fervor on the federal level. State lawmakers are ALEC’s targets — officeholders unaccustomed to a multi-million dollar influence operation. The group invites lawmakers to participate in policy sessions that equally balance corporate executives on one side with elected officials on the other. Consumers are not invited to participate.
ALEC’s telecom members have several agendas on the state level, mostly repealing:
•Local franchising and oversight of cable television service;
•Statewide oversight of the quality of service and measuring the reliability of phone and cable operators;
•Consumer protection laws, including those that offer customers a third party contact for unresolved service problems;
•Universal service requirements that insist all customers in a geographic region be permitted to receive service;
•Funding support for public, educational, and government access television channels;
•Rules governing the eventual termination of essential service for non/past due payments;
•Local zoning requirements and licensing of outside work.
But ALEC is not always focused on deregulation or “smaller government.” In fact, many of its clients want new legislation that is designed to protect their position of incumbency or enhance profits. Cable and phone company-written bills that restrict or ban public broadband networks are introduced to lawmakers through ALEC-sponsored events. In several cases, model legislation that was developed by cable and phone companies was used as a template for nearly-identical bills introduced in several states without disclosing who actually authored the original bill.
http://stopthecap.com/2012/03/14/inside-alec-how-corporations-ghost-write-anti-consumer-state-telecom-legislation/
= new reply since forum marked as read
