Our Commitment

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The Marketplace is committed to sharing as much information as possible to expose the American Legislative Exchange Council otherwise know as ALEC.  Who they are, what they do, and what it means to us.

We are pleased that 80 corporations, 19 non-profits, and 78 state legislators that have cut ties with ALEC.

We applaud CMD, along with Color of Change, Common Cause, People for the American Way, Progress Now and many others for keeping the pressure on and keeping this in the public eye.

ALEC and Criminal Justice Reform

CCA and GEO Group, both members of ALEC are expanding their presence in California. It appears that the Prison Industrial Complex is outpacing criminal justice reform.
"CCA alone holds more than 8,000 California inmates at facilities in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The company's new deal with California expands the state's prison capacity by an additional 2,300 prisoners, and California's contracts with the GEO Group add another 1,400. Along with an existing private prison contract in the state, the new contracts bring California's total number of private-prison inmates to about 12,300."  Read more here.
ALEC has their hands in criminal justice reform.  If there's money to be made, ALEC will find a way to make it work.
"In competition with private prisons are other industries which are coming up with solutions to reduce incarceration costs that will benefit them. For instance, a 2007 brief by ALEC recommended releasing people early from prison with conditional release bonds, similar to bail bonds, effectively setting up bonding companies as private parole agencies."   Read more here.

In The News

  • August 19, 2014 - Microsoft announced that it's cutting ties with ALEC.  It appears this decision was made due to ALEC's lobbing efforts to block the development of renewable energy.
  • November 7, 2013 - Arizona Capital Times reports "Months after publicly leaving ALEC in 2012, APS quietly rejoined"
  • August 19, 2013 - PR Watch reports "Wall Street Journal Defends ALEC without Disclosing Deep Ties of Editorial Board Member Stephen Moore"
  • August 15, 2013 -  Wells Fargo, which was a member of ALEC in 2011, told CMD in September 2012 that it declined to renew its ALEC membership in 2012, and then subsequently sponsored ALEC's 2013 Annual Meeting in Chicago

What is ALEC?

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Q: What is the American Legislative Exchange Council?

A: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.  It provides a constructive forum for state legislators and private sector leaders to discuss and exchange practical, state-level public policy issues.  The potential solutions discussed at ALEC focus on free markets, limited government and constitutional division of powers between the federal and state governments.  The organization respects diversity of thought; it is a non-partisan resource for its members, which include more than 2,000 Republican and Democratic state legislators.

United States of ALEC

Moyers & Company presents “United States of ALEC,” a report on the most influential corporate-funded political force most of America has never heard of — ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.

Voter Suppression, the Republican Party, and ALEC: Connecting the Dots

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In a prior article I shared that at least 180 restrictive bills were introduced since the beginning of 2011 in 41 states.  Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina, and Florida have received a lot of press coverage lately.  What do all of these states have in common? Republican Governors.  Currently there are 29 Republican, 20 Democrat, 1 Independent Governors in the US. 

To understand the effect this has on the promotion and introduction of voter ID and other voter suppression legislation, we need to explore how ALEC functions.

Over 30 years ago a nonpartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers who shared a common belief in limited government, free markets, federalism, and individual liberty was formed known as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  Their belief is that the states should share co-equal status with the federal government.