The Secrecy That Accompanies the Lack of Lobbying Disclosure

ALEC has gone local. No, not Alec Baldwin. ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization that for the last few years has been drafting conservative legislation for state legislatures. According to an article in today's New York Times, this year ALEC started a new program called the American City County Exchange, which will draft conservative legislation for local legislatures.

Its first area of focus is right-to-work laws, the term for laws that prohibit labor unions from requiring their members to pay fees. The members still get the value of the union's work, but don't have to pay for it. This leaves the union with less resources to get politically involved. The goal of these laws is changing the balance of political competition.

The issue I want to raise involves local lobbying. When organizations such as ALEC try to get county officials to pass their laws, they do not have to disclose their lobbying, because very few counties have lobbying oversight programs. Thus, according to the article, when an ALEC ordinance came before the Warren County, Kentucky Fiscal Court (effectively, the county commission) last week, it came completely out of the blue, with no disclosure of lobbying or even of the topic of the ordinance.

"It was advertised in advance as 'an ordinance relating to the promotion of economic development and commerce,' and there was little public comment, though there were presentations by the Chamber of Commerce and the Bluegrass Institute, a policy group with close ties to ALEC. 'It was sprung on everybody,' said Connie Warren, the financial secretary of the United Automobile Workers Local 2164. 'The other side had all their ducks in a row; we didn’t have even the opportunity to say how we felt about it.'"

At the state level, at least, there are lobbying disclosure requirements and committees through which an ordinance has to pass. There are also professional lobbyists both for business interests and for labor interests, so that there can be no surprises. At the county and city levels, there rarely are disclosure requirements and often no committee process.

What makes this secret process even worse is the involvement of an organization called Protect My Check. According to the article, Protect My Check has promised to cover any legal expenses that come from passing a right-to-work ordinance, which many people believe contravenes federal law. According to my research online, Protect My Check was only established this September and has no online presence. But the My Check My Choice website says that it was "started by Protect My Check, Inc.," even though the records show they were established on the same day and have offices in the same building in Tampa.

The spokesperson for Protect My Check told the Times that "his group’s donors were not public but, other than his own contribution, all of the money raised so far had been from local businesses and employers in the targeted counties." But how is anyone to know?

This is far too much secrecy for my taste. Ordinances should not be passed without any information about who has drafted them, who has lobbied for them, or who the lobbyists' clients or funders are. And ordinances should not be passed without listening to other voices or allowing them even to speak at a public meeting.

Lobbying disclosure programs make this kind of secrecy more difficult to accomplish, especially if local officials are themselves required to keep public logs of their meetings and communications with lobbyists. This is why my chapter on local lobbying, which will be available next month, calls for lobbying disclosure programs for all local governments, where there are now very few of them. We cannot tolerate secrecy in local government.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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