December 9, 2006 Arizona Republic
Hundreds of state lawmakers from around the country will work with industry lobbyists in the Valley today to craft model legislation on tort reform, corporate tax policy and industry regulations. The task force meetings cap the three-day States & Nation Policy Summit at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that wields significant influence on state legislation but is virtually unknown to average citizens. Dozens of Arizona legislators belong to ALEC, at a rate that the state chairman says is higher than in most states. And its influence in Arizona has been seen in recent years on legislation ranging from private prisons and school choice to tax policy and environmental regulations. Model legislation and policy positions adopted at the local summit could lead to new laws proposed in Arizona and statehouses across the country. Nationwide ALEC boasts membership from about one-third of all state legislators in the nation and bills itself as a non-partisan but conservative group that promotes Jeffersonian principles of individual liberty, free markets and limited government. But it is the group's connections to corporate America and its strategy of developing industry-approved model legislation for its members around the country that distinguish it from other legislative groups. That also has generated a lot of criticism, especially from environmental organizations. Sen. Bob Burns, R-Peoria, Arizona's state chairman for ALEC, says the criticism of corporations' role in the organization is unfounded. "Are we supposed to lock the private sector out of the legislative process?" he asked. But critics believe many in the public would be concerned if they knew the role that corporate interests play in developing ALEC's model legislation and policy positions. Last year, ALEC says, more than 1,000 ALEC bills were introduced in state legislatures, including Arizona's. About 20 percent of the total went into law. "If you are all for corporate America controlling the agenda in America's statehouses, there is nothing wrong with it," says Adam Schafer, executive director of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators. "But if you think elected officials should be the ones writing the laws, you may find problems with the way they do their model legislation." Corporations and industry groups almost completely finance the group's activities through membership dues and donations, and pay for sometimes extravagant trips for many legislators and their families to conference destinations at resorts around the country. Companies spend thousands of additional dollars to buy seats at the table during task force meetings where the group's model legislation is crafted. ALEC officials say industry representatives pay the task force dues starting at around $2,500 annually to gain a seat on each task force in their areas of interest. The dues for some task forces are higher, but ALEC officials wouldn't say how high the dues for industry members can go. The task forces are structured with two chambers: one consisting of legislators, the other of industry representatives, ALEC officials say. In task force meetings, which are not open to the media, industry lobbyists can push their own pet legislation or block bills they oppose. To become model legislation, both the public sector and private sector sides must approve the bill. Lori Roman, ALEC's executive director, points out that task force legislation must be approved by legislative board members before it becomes model legislation. And Michael Bowman, director of policy and strategic initiatives, says it would be "almost criminal" not to consult industry representatives and notes that companies sometimes have competing interests anyway. "We have so many special-interest groups or so many business interests or corporations here that they don't even agree," he said. "You can't pass something that favors your own company because another company is going to say, 'We're not going to vote for that.' " Russell Smoldon, a lobbyist for SRP and ALEC's private-sector chairman in Arizona, says corporate influence on public policy shouldn't be viewed any differently than union influence or the influence of environmental groups. But critics say that the industry lobbyists may have huge economic incentives to push legislation they favor that may not be in the public good. A representative for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is the co-chair of the tax and fiscal policy task force, for example, and the group has pushed model legislation and policy papers critical of tobacco taxes. Robert Dewey, a vice president for Defenders of Wildlife, which has issued a scathing report on the group, calls ALEC a "Trojan horse" that allows "corporate America to exercise significant influence over state legislation in almost every statehouse around the country." Others, like Tim Delaney of the Phoenix-based Center for Leadership, Ethics & Public Service, question how close they adhere to Jeffersonian principles. "I'm not sure Thomas Jefferson wanted to have Big Tobacco or Big Pharmacy companies in the backroom writing legislation," he said.

August 14, 2006 In These Times
While New Mexico’s landscape may make the state the Land of Enchantment, its rapidly growing rates of incarceration have been utterly disenchanting. What’s worse, New Mexico is at the top of the nation’s list for privatizing prisons; nearly one-half of the state’s prisons and jails are run by corporations. Supposedly, states turn to private companies to cope better with chronic overcrowding and for low-cost management. However, a closer look suggests a different rationale. A recent report from the Montana-based Institute on Money in State Politics reveals that during the 2002 and 2004 election cycles, private prison companies, directors, executives and lobbyists gave $3.3 million to candidates and state political parties across 44 states. According to Edwin Bender, executive director of the Institute on Money in State Politics, private prison companies strongly favor giving to states with the toughest sentencing laws—in essence, the ones that are more likely to come up with the bodies to fill prison beds. Those states, adds Bender, are also the ones most likely to have passed “three-strikes” laws. Those laws, first passed by Washington state voters in 1993 and then California voters in 1994, quickly swept the nation. They were largely based on “cookie-cutter legislation” pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), some of whose members come from the ranks of private prison companies. Florida leads the pack in terms of private prison dollars, with its candidates and political parties receiving almost 20 percent of their total contributions from private prison companies and their affiliates. Florida already has five privately owned and operated prisons, with a sixth on the way. It’s also privatized the bulk of its juvenile detention system. Texas and New Jersey are close behind. But in Florida, some of the influence peddling finally seems to be backfiring. Florida State Corrections Secretary James McDonough alarmed private prison companies with a comment during an Aug. 2 morning call-in radio show. “I actually think the state is better at running the prisons,” McDonough told an interviewer. His comments followed an internal audit last year by the state’s Department of Management Services, which demonstrated that Florida overpaid private prison operators by $1.3 million. Things may no longer be quite as sunny as they once were in Florida for the likes of Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the former Wackenhut, now known as the GEO Group of Boca Raton, Fla. But with a little bit of spiel-tinkering—and a shift of attention to other states—the prison privatizers are likely to keep going. The key shift, Bender explains, is that “the prison industry has gone from a we-can-save-you-money pitch to an economic-development model pitch.” In other words, says Bender, “you need [their] prisons for jobs.” If political donations are any measure, economically challenged and poverty-stricken states like New Mexico are a great target. In this campaign cycle, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson has already received more contributions from a private prison company than any other politician campaigning for state office in the United States. The Institute of Money in State Politics, which traced the donations, reported that GEO has contributed $42,750 to Richardson since 2005—and another $8,000 to his running mate, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish. Another $30,000 went from GEO to the Richardson-headed Democratic Governors Association this past March. Richardson’s PAC, Moving America Forward, was another prominent recipient of GEO donations. Now, its former head, prominent state capitol lobbyist Joe Velasquez, is a registered lobbyist for GEO Care Inc., a healthcare subsidiary that runs a hospital in New Mexico. But don’t get the idea that GEO has any particular love for Democrats: $95,000 from the corporation went to the Republican Governors Association last year alone. What companies like GEO do love are the millions of dollars rolling in from lucrative New Mexico contracts to run the Lea County Correctional Facility (operating budget: $25 million/year), and the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility ($13 million/year), among others. CCA also owns and operates the state’s only women’s facility in Grants ($11 million per year). To make sure that those dollars keep flowing, GEO and CCA have perfected the art of the “very tight revolving door,” says Bender, which involves snapping up former corrections administrators, PAC lobbyists and state officials to serve as consultants to private prison companies. In fact, the current New Mexico Corrections Department Secretary Joe Williams was once on GEO’s payroll as their warden of the Lea County Correctional Facility. Earlier this year, Williams was placed on unpaid administrative leave after accusations surfaced that he spent state travel and phone funds to pursue a very close relationship with Ann Casey. Casey is a registered lobbyist in New Mexico for Wexford Health Sources, which provides health care for prisoners at Grants, and Aramark, which provides most of the state’s inmate meals. In her non-lobbying hours, it turns out that Casey is also an assistant warden at a state prison in Centralia, Ill. It appears that even for a prison industry enchanted by public-private partnership, Williams and Casey may have gone too far.

May 2, 2006 Progressive State Network
The Institute on Money in State Politics, a tireless group of people who compile campaign finance data for all fifty states and regularly report national trends, have a new report "Policy Lock-Down: Prison Interests Court Political Players" looking at the $3.3 million private prison companies have donated to state-level actors in the last two election cycles. The report specifically notes: Analysis of campaign contributions made to state-level candidates and political parties also reveals that private-prison interests: Concentrated their giving on legislative candidates who, if elected, act on state budgets and sentencing laws. These candidates received almost half of the money given to candidates — slightly more than $1 million. So the priority is budgets and people who determine sentencing? This will come as no shock to anyone who has studied the origin of strict sentencing laws in America. As Nathan Newman noted in "Governing the Nation From the Statehouses: ": For two decades, ALEC has been a driving force in lobbying for legislation to hand over prisons to corporate management, with 95,000 inmates in at least 31 states or 6.5% of all prisoners in private prisons, two-thirds of them in prisons run by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of ALEC's leading corporate sponsors. Seven states place more than one-fifth of their prison population in corporate-run prisons. A 2000 report by the Western States Center, "The Prison Payoff: The Role of Politics and Private Prisons in the Incarceration Boom," traced the rise of private prisons to "tough on crime" legislation sponsored by ALEC and its allies that extended sentences and pushed prison populations beyond the capacities of existing state facilities. And conservatives who pushed budget-busting sentencing laws then turned around and blamed guard salaries for the resulting funding crisis. With tight fiscal budgets, privatization was sold as the solution. State prison guards, who had often supported many of the tougher sentencing laws, have found their jobs disappearing to privatization through this two-step process. In Wisconsin, for example, more than 3000 inmates are sent out of state to CCA facilities, leaving the remaining state guards in overcrowded prisons subject to riots and other threats. CCA isn't just one of ALEC's leading sponsors. For a time, they chaired the task force that authors model legislation on sentencing issues for ALEC. Humorously, when Wyoming's Casper Star-Tribune reported on this fact, they drew a quick response from CCA, claiming that CCA does not believe that mandatory sentencing laws help their business. No word yet on how private prison companies are responding to the new Institute report.

Wyoming Legislature
March 13, 2006 Star-Tribune
Wyoming’s legislators form a citizen’s legislature ordinary people, who like yourself and your neighbors, work for a living and strive to do what’s best for the people of Wyoming, within the confines of the state and United States Constitutions. Because Wyoming legislators put on their pants (or pantyhose) one leg at a time, they don’t necessarily come up with ideas for legislation all on their own, out of their own fertile imaginations. Sometimes they get help, from local and national sources, some of which might surprise Wyoming citizens. According to Wyoming legislators and legislative staff, there are several organizations out there that provide research, data and even model legislation to legislatures and legislators throughout the country. • The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a bipartisan membership association for conservative state lawmakers, to advance the “Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism and individual liberty.” Headquarters is in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, who also helped found the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, the Moral Majority and the Council for National Policy. ALEC, which claims 2,400 legislator members, charges legislators $100 per biennium to join (constituting less than 2 percent of the annual budget), but then charges corporations (over 300) and associations graduated memberships at $5,000; $10,000; $25,000 and $50,000 to sit at the table with legislators and craft “model” legislation. Corporate funds underwrite travel scholarships, by which legislators and their families can attend national meetings. ALEC’s corporate members have a keen interest in the bills that they craft. For example, model legislation for "three strikes" and "minimum sentencing" -- laws to keep convicted criminals in prison longer was partially crafted by the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest private prison organization, when it sat on ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force. The odds are fairly even, that if you ask your state legislator whether he or she is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the answer will be “Yes.” (Of course, every member of the Wyoming Legislature and Legislative Service Office is a member of the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Council of State Governments, by virtue of being elected to or employed by the Wyoming Legislature.) The trouble is, ALEC itself and Rep. Pete Illoway, R-Cheyenne (a member of ALEC’s national board of directors) won’t tell you who is a member of ALEC. Illoway did say that of Wyoming’s 90 state legislators, close to half are members of ALEC, but he refused to provide a list, though he said he has both Republican and Democratic members. Interviewed earlier this week in his office, Rep. Illoway said he took great offense of a letter that had appeared that morning in the Casper Star Tribune, from Brett Glass. Glass, an Internet access provider in Wyoming, charged that “ALEC drafts "model" bills which favor its corporate sponsors. It then encourages state legislators to introduce the bills in their home states. This year's concealed weapons bill, for example, contains language from ALEC's "Concealed Carry Outright Recognition Act," while the "duty to retreat" bill was based on ALEC's "Castle Doctrine Act" (as in, "a man's home is his castle"). Both were drafted by a committee chaired by a lobbyist from Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer of firearms and ammunition. A bill which would have increased tobacco taxes, and used the proceeds to fund substance-abuse prevention, was opposed strongly by legislators and lobbyists involved with ALEC -- none of whom were registered as lobbying for the group.” Illoway said he’s used model legislation from ALEC once eight years ago n a bill against the Kyoto global warming treaty. “I haven’t used a model bill since then,” he said. He said he didn’t know of any ALEC-oriented bills introduced this session, although an ALEC Report Card said five such bills had been introduced and one passed into law. (ALEC headquarters did not respond to a request about what those bills were.) Illoway said that as a conservative and as “an anti-tax guy,” he enjoys going to ALEC conferences mostly to interact with other like-minded legislators from around the country.