American Legislative Exchange Council - Critics of ALEC

Critics of ALEC

ALEC's membership list and the origin of its model bills were not disclosed; BusinessWeek wrote that "part of ALEC's mission is to present industry-backed legislation as grass-roots work." ALEC's role in drafting and distributing model legislation through its lawmaker members became public knowledge as the result of a Freedom of Information Act filing and a leak of ALEC's internal library of model legislation, resulting in scrutiny and controversy over the group's role in the legislative process. The New York Times wrote that "special interests effectively turn ALEC’s lawmaker members into stealth lobbyists, providing them with talking points, signaling how they should vote, and collaborating on bills affecting hundreds of issues like school vouchers and tobacco taxes." Progressive advocacy groups such as Common Cause questioned ALEC's non-profit status, alleging that the Council engaged in lobbying. ALEC responded by denying that it engaged in lobbying, and arguing that liberal groups were attacking ALEC because "they don't have a comparable group that is as effective as ALEC in enacting policies into law."