Blowing the Whistle on ALEC's Little Brother ACCE

Publication Date: 2015-08-06

• Author:PRWatch
• Publication:PRWatch

...Will ACCE Become the ALEC for Cities and Counties? (Part 6)

In coming to the ALEC/ACCE conference my big question was, would ACCE be able to duplicate ALEC’s success in getting hundreds of bills passed around the country that cripple worker and environmental protections. Would it open the floodgates to corporate influence in shaping our urban political environment?...

While other major cities around the country have followed Seattle in raising the minimum wage, the right wing is pretty limited in what they can do to stop that effort either within the respective city councils or at the ballot box when initiatives propose them. As result ACCE may continue to push laws and resolutions through which its members cede their power to state legislatures by stripping away the power of cities to control or at least shape their own economic environment. Stopping cities from passing plastic bag bans by going through the state legislature is a perfect example. This approach was deployed by ALEC for nearly two decades in alignment with the legislative agenda of the NRA and the gun industry through peddling “preemption” of city laws through a claimed need for “consistency,” pitting rural gun owners against city efforts to control handgun crimes.

Although it wasn’t directly mentioned at this ACCE meeting, ALEC has long opposed paid sick leave or increasing the minimum wage and ALEC has promoted Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s legislation to preempt paid sick leave in Milwaukee. ACCE has also embraced preemption in other areas while simultaneously pushing an effort by Brent Yessin to use counties to attack unions, which has resulted in a lawsuit being argued this week over whether local bodies can pass so-called “right to work” measures even though federal law expressly provides that certain union rules are governed by either federal or state laws...