Reply #440: ME ALEC’s Long Arm Reaching into Maine Policy - ME Greens & BDN Oct 2 / Sep 15 [View All]

Eric Russell’s story on the American Legislative Exchange Council (BDN, Sept. 14) leaves open more questions than it answers. Are our laws outsourced? Does it matter? Are our legislators taking their direction from deep-pocketed corporate interests? Does it matter that legislators’ travel and hotel costs are typically funded (all-expense-paid vacations) by ALEC to their national meetings? Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Thanks to the investigations of the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy, alecexposed.org, we know of several Maine legislators with ALEC task-force assignments: Sen. Brian Langley (education), Rep. James Hamper and Sen. Mike Thibodeau (telecommunications and information technology), Sen. Deb Plowman (civil justice), Sen. Doug Thomas (energy, environment and agriculture), Sen. Chris Rector (international relations) and Rep. Ryan Harmon (tax and fiscal policy).

We have already seen such a council formed to decide the fate of LURC , and that commission is hand picked to do the bidding of leading Republican policymakers. Its constituency fits the description of ALEC’s proposed Environmental Priorities Council — a panel that would include no scientists or public-interest environmental delegates. We will be watching closely for ALEC legislation calling for such a council, proposed to have just five members: a representative from the state Chamber of Commerce, an agency (DEP?), a representative selected by the governor, one Republican, one Democrat and an economist to chair the group and ensure that decisions are based on cost-benefit analysis, not on concerns for water quality, air pollution and other threats to public health and safety.

There are some 1,000 bills from ALEC’s playbook to be scrutinized, but here are a few that raise red flags for their potential impact on Maine’s environment and quality of life: ((GO TO LINK for list of 12+ bills))

A number of ALEC bills bear directly on current proposals to protect wilderness areas in Maine. One opposes federal acquisition of public land (specifically, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act). Another resolves that local government must consent to national monument designation. Yet another authorizes state governments to appropriate federal public lands (national parks, etc.) for oil, gas and coal extraction. The establishment of an ombudsman office within Maine’s Legislative Council would oppose any zoning perceived as threatening private-property rights. And ALEC proposes bills criminalizing environmental activism that might be construed by law enforcement as “eco-terrorism.”