ALEC meeting in Dallas provides a preview for the next state sessions
If you want to get a read on the next legislative season in Missouri and Kansas, you could get a few hints from the lawmakers’ friend. This would be the friend named ALEC, the pro-business, anti-consumer organization that fashions cookie-cutter “model legislation” for every conservative state legislator in the land.
ALEC and its adherents — including GOP leaders in both state capitols — have been responsible for some of the most contentious legislative battles of recent years. Many of them involve preserving and enhancing major corporate and industrial interests, especially those of its fossil-fuel funders such as Koch Industries. Or, as ALEC puts it, “Championing Policies to Enhance Prosperity.”
ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council, is holding its annual meeting this week in Dallas. (The group held a policy workshop for lawmakers earlier this year in Kansas City.) Based on ALEC’s meeting agenda, it’s possible to foresee certain topics and strategies likely to emerge next year in Jefferson City and Topeka.
Of course, energy production and the energy marketplace rank high. Surely Kansas lawmakers, doing the bidding of ALEC and Koch, are preparing for another attack to repeal tax credits and output goals for renewable energy, despite the fact that the program has boosted the wind-power industry — and brought good-paying jobs — in the state. The effort failed this year, by a slim margin in the Kansas House, but repeal proponents are relentless.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article840664.html
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