Our Mission

The American Legislative Issue Campaign Exchange (ALICE) has a bold and ambitious new agenda:   They’ve set out to identify 10,000 progressive local elected officials and create a network to share best practices.  We support these efforts for several reasons:

-These local officials are tomorrow’s state and national leaders. Many of our city council members, county board officials, county executives, mayors and metro officials will become key decision makers in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress.  The earlier we reach them, the easier it will be to implement progressive policy in all levels of government.

-Nineteen of twenty elected officials in this country are local.  The Census Bureau reports that out of 511,039 American elected officials, less than 4 percent are in federal and state government.  The remaining 96 percent - over 490,000 -serve in local government.  For every person in congress, there are over 900 local officials.  For every state elected official, there are 66 at the local level.

-The evolution of devolution means local government will continue to grow.  The number of local government employees has increased from 3.3 million in 1946 to a workforce of almost 19 million today:  That’s a 470% increase in capacity, while our population increased just 104% during that same period. During the 1990’s, the number of state and local government employees increased by over 17%, and this trend will continue.

-Local leaders administer over our urban infrastructure and are the main decision makers on policy issues we care about:  Child Welfare, Workforce Development, Clean Water, Housing, Transit Planning, Land Use, Employment Training and other Social Services. 

-Resources for local elected officials are stretched thin.  They have few staff members and are often overwhelmed and outnumbered by corporate contract lobbyists.  The fiscal crisis hitting the state legislatures has an acute impact on local government, which is increasingly mandated to govern over more with fewer funds. 

-This network doesn’t exist.  While most regional groups communicate with local city and county board members, there is no national best practices organization attempting to identify a progressive network of mayors, county executives, and other local elected officials.  This is new territory, and if successful, we will take an important and strategic step ahead of the conservatives in this arena.

We support ALICE’s goal to serve as a clearinghouse of model practices at the local level and will assist them in providing best practices to local elected officials, stakeholders, activists and issue experts.  As they build this new capacity of 10,000 progressive voices, we encourage you to support their efforts along with us.

Sincerely,

Tim McFeeley, Center For Policy Alternatives (CPA)

Michael Ettlinger, Economic Analysis Research Network (EARN)

Joel Rogers, Center On WisconsinStrategy (COWS)

Greg Leroy, Good Jobs First (GJF)

Heidi Hartmann, Institute For Women's Policy Research (IWPR)

Steve Kest, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)

Amy Dean, Working Partnerships  USA

Bruce Colburn, AFL-CIO

Mary Bottari, Public Citizen

Maurice Emsellem, National Employment Law Project

Amy Hanauer, Policy Matters  Ohio 

Gloria Totten, Progressive Majority

Paul Sonn, The  Brennan  Center

Peg Reagan, Conservation Leaders Network

Ken Jacobs, UC  Berkeley  Labor  Center

Dan Swinney, Center for Labor and Community Research

Dan Carol, CTSG

Back Story on Devolution:  Two Decades of Lost Ground. 

Starting in 1981, President Reagan shifted decision-making on important policy matters out of Federal Agencies, Congress and the White House and into the fifty state capitols across the country.  Organized corporate entities such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), The Farm Bureau and State Chambers of Commerce took full advantage of this shift, while progressive non-profit national advocacy organizations have largely failed to fight on this new state-by-state battleground.

National progressive non-profits instead clung to the “command and control” model of federal agency advocacy, and have effectively removed themselves from the game.  Just consider, state legislatures evaluate over 150,000 bills each year and pass more than 25,000 into law.  For every one law that Congress passes, state legislatures typically pass seventy-five.  With this “devolution” of federal power to states and counties, important decisions on economic development, environmental policy and government accountability now fall to local officials. 

Over the past two decades -- as devolution has played out -- corporate entities unleashed well-financed and high-powered lobbyists onto state capitals, outnumbering state lawmakers by nearly six to one.  Many state officials were not prepared for the onslaught and served at a defensive disadvantage:  Forty-three of the fifty state legislatures are composed of part-time lawmakers who earn an average of only $18,000 each year.  In 38 states, lawmakers have no assigned staff members. Sixteen state legislatures meet for less than 90 days a year; six convene only once every two years.

Like NBA basketball players let loose on the Olympics, professional lobbyists exercised their clout on statehouses and the impact is clear.  ALEC boasts, “During the 1999-2000 legislative cycle, ALEC legislators introduced more than 3100 pieces of legislation based on our models, and more than 450 of these were enacted. . . . In the legislative Sessions of 2000, there were more than 2150 introductions promoting ALEC Policy.” 

In this post-devolution environment, state influence peddlers are CEO’s, contract lobbyists, bankers, builders and businessmen.   Their suggested “model legislation” is profit driven -- passed through ALEC -- with devastating economic and anti-environmental consequences.  These model laws are being drawn up in back boardrooms by lobbyists instead of legislators, and an unsuspecting public pays the price. (For more information on this process, download the report from www.alecwatch.org.) 

Many local elected officials simply don’t have the staff, expertise, time or resources to match professional contract lobbyists on a bill-to-bill basis.  With the creation of ALICE, progressive organizations, activists, stakeholders and experts will be able to offer the best practices to local officials, giving an online map to take the High Road.

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