Reply #373: WY - Group w ready-made legislative (ALEC in Wyoming) spurs call for more disclosure WyoFile Jan 11 [View All]

CODY — Though members of Wyoming’s citizen Legislature pride themselves on being closely connected to their constituents, voters might be surprised to learn that some laws proposed and passed in Cheyenne are first shaped by state lawmakers and major corporations during privately funded junkets in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. As the 2011 legislative session convenes this week, some watchdog groups — and at least one legislator — are calling for better disclosure from lobbyists and greater transparency from groups that seek to influence or propose specific laws.

The Legislature’s 13-member bipartisan management council has long authorized spending public funds for lawmakers to attend leadership training and policy meetings offered by the nonpartisan Council of State Governments or the National Council of State Legislatures. But the state won’t pay for legislators to attend any of the three annual ALEC meetings, where corporate members and lawmakers jointly serve on various issue-related task forces to draft model legislation.

Illoway (ALEC State Chairman Rep. Peter Illoway (R–Cheyenne) also declined to name Wyoming’s ALEC members, but said that about 18 legislators attended a December policy summit in Washington, D.C. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell you who went back. That’s up to them,” Illoway said.
State law allows private entities to pay for legislators’ travel, lodging and registration for functions related to their status in the Legislature. Food and beverages are exempt from restrictions on accepting gifts. Consequently, no expense reports or other disclosures are filed by legislators attending such functions. Likewise, no lobbyist disclosure is required by ALEC, which maintains that it does not engage in lobbying.
So the only way to track which legislators attend functions held by groups like ALEC is to ask each elected official individually, something most voters are unlikely to do, particularly if they don’t know which groups to ask about.

The press is excluded from task force meetings because only ALEC members may have access to model bills, Weber said, and because some draft bills are never adopted. Making the meetings private also allows for more open and free discussions, she said. She said no reporters from Wyoming attended ALEC’s December gathering.

Illoway said he didn’t think it was especially important for voters to be able to track which bills contained ALEC language. “I don’t think that anybody cares in Wyoming about how a particular piece of legislation was put together if it’s good for the citizens and good for the state,” he said.

Roscoe (Rep. Jim Roscoe (D–Wilson)) said he attended the ALEC session as a first-time guest, and “went with my eyes open.” “I think as a legislator, you have to think for yourself,” he said. It was difficult at times to be one of the few Democrats in a large group of mostly Republicans — many still celebrating the recent national GOP election victories — but the networking and information at ALEC was helpful, he said. “They took grand care of you, but it’s just a lobby. They are lobbying you for conservative legislation that pretty much benefits these companies,” Roscoe said.

'RULE CHANGE'
It would be relatively easy to change the Legislature’s rules to require that members turn in a report after attending privately funded education or training sessions, listing who paid for their travel, meals, lodging, entertainment or other perks, Neal (Dan Neal, Executive Director, State Policy Center) said. Plenty of lobbying goes on in Cheyenne as well, Neal said, and the “process would be better served by tighter reporting on lobbyists themselves, so people have a sense of how much money is spent by special-interest groups trying to influence legislation.”

(Raegan) Weber, the ALEC spokeswoman, said even her group has difficulty tracking all the bills in various states that are based on its model legislation. That’s mainly because lawmakers often pull only sections of a model bill, and don’t always inform ALEC staffers when they sponsor an ALEC-based bill, she said.

Weber said six Wyoming bills introduced in 2010 included at least some ALEC language or priorities, including the Healthy Frontiers pilot project. Still pending is an ALEC-based resolution in support of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing increased corporate funding of election campaigns. An ALEC-based bill directing the Wyoming attorney general to join state lawsuits against federal health care reforms failed last year. Gov. Matt Mead announced last week that Wyoming will seek to join several other states in a lawsuit challenging the legality of federal health care reform. This year, ALEC-based bills on immigration and health care are likely to be introduced in Wyoming. Arizona’s controversial 2010 immigration law was based on a model bill from ALEC. Illoway cited only one specific ALEC model bill that he has used. That language, included in a 1999 environmental law, was aimed at blocking federally mandated carbon capture and pollution regulation efforts based on the Kyoto Protocol, he said.

Former Gov. Dave Freudenthal last year cited that law....