TRENTON — Let's say you're a state lawmaker, passionate about charter schools, and you want to turn this passion into laws that create social change. What you need are bills. And you want them fast — ready-made, just add water, written in language that can withstand partisan debate and legal scrutiny.

There is a place that has just what you want.

It’s called the American Legislative Exchange Council, a little-known conservative group headquartered in Washington, D.C., and funded by some of the biggest corporations in the United States — most with a business interest in state legislation.

ALEC has quietly made its mark on the political landscape by providing state governments with mock-up bills that academic and political experts say are, for the most part, tailored to fit a conservative agenda. In recent years, states — particularly those with new Republican governors and legislatures — have been flooded with ALEC’s model bills. Nearly 1,000 of them are introduced every year, and roughly one-fifth of those become law, according to ALEC’s own count. ALEC’s bills are especially attractive because they are written so they can virtually be copied and pasted onto legislative proposals across the land.

For lawmakers, it can be an irresistible service.

"The bottom line is what’s important. The bottom line is: ‘Get me a bill. I want the bill. Get me a bill that can do what you’re talking about,’" said Rutgers University professor Alan Rosenthal, an expert on state legislatures. "And ALEC can give them a bill."

A Star-Ledger analysis of hundreds of documents shows that ALEC bills are surfacing in New Jersey, where Republican Gov. Chris Christie is trying to remake the state, frequently against the wishes of a Democrat-controlled Legislature.

This report is part of a series on ALEC and Gov. Chris Christie. Below are the other reports in the series:



• At Arizona gathering, ALEC teaches lawmakers how to turn conservative ideas into law

• Despite similarities, officials say they did not use model ALEC bills for Christie's education legislation

ALEC MODEL BILLS

Each of the model bills cited is listed below, with links to the corresponding N.J. legislation and highlighted excerpts.

• Innovation School and School Districts Act

• Great Teachers and Leaders Act

• Next Generation Charter Schools Act

• Parent Empowerment and Choice Act

• Right to Work

• Pollution Control or Abatement Flexibility Act

Drawing on bills crafted by the council, on New Jersey legislation and dozens of e-mails by Christie staffers and others, The Star-Ledger found a pattern of similarities between ALEC's proposals and several measures championed by the Christie administration. At least three bills, one executive order and one agency rule accomplish the same goals set out by ALEC using the same specific policies. In eight passages contained in those documents, New Jersey initiatives and ALEC proposals line up almost word for word. Two other Republican bills not pushed by the governor's office are nearly identical to ALEC models.

ALEC gained wide attention last week when one of its bills — a "stand your ground" law that allows anyone who feels threatened to defend themselves with deadly force — became part of a national controversy over the shooting death of a 17-year-old Florida boy. New Jersey has no such law.

There is nothing illegal in what ALEC does or in using its bills, but critics say New Jersey officials are handing off a cardinal duty — do your own work — to a national group with unique ties to the business world. If they’re relying on templates, critics add, state officials should publicly acknowledge any work that they do not do themselves and the source of any proposals that aren’t their own, especially when that source has an agenda.

Christie’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said there is no connection between the efforts spearheaded by Christie and ALEC.

"Our reforms have no basis in anyone’s model legislation," Drewniak said. "The governor said to me, 'Who's ALEC?'"

Christie declined to comment for this story.

Drewniak and supporters of the governor said they research many sources to craft New Jersey measures.

STRIKING SIMILARITIES

Most New Jersey lawmakers sponsoring bills similar to ALEC models told The Star-Ledger that they received those bills from the Christie administration.

ALEC’s communications director, Kaitlyn Buss, said that she was not aware of any working relationship with the Christie administration and that the group’s experts advise state officials across the country.

"Our model legislation is out there," she said. "We do events in all the 50 states throughout the year — just like New Jersey — because state legislators are interested in the best practices and policies ALEC puts out."

She did not respond to requests for further comment.

The Star-Ledger analysis shows that however it happened — whether from the work of aides who used an ALEC model to draft a bill or from selective borrowing from other states that copied from ALEC — the similarities between ALEC models and New Jersey actions are too strong to be accidental. The connections, The Ledger survey shows, are based not on similarity of broad ideas, but on specific numbers, time frames, benchmarks and language.

Consider:

The School Children First Act, a landmark bill sponsored by Assemblyman Jay Webber, the co-chairman of ALEC’s state chapter and one of six New Jersey legislators who are members of the group, includes the five specific requirements in ALEC’s Great Teachers and Leaders Act.

The ALEC model calls for teacher ratings of "highly effective," "effective," "ineffective" and more categories if needed.

The New Jersey bill, pushed by the Christie administration, calls for ratings of "highly effective," "effective," "partially effective" and "ineffective."

The ALEC model calls for tenure after three years of "effective" or "highly effective" ratings, along with mutual consent hiring, which would require principals to sign off on any teacher hires the school district approves.

Christie’s proposal also calls for tenure after three years of positive evaluations, along with mutual consent hiring.

ABOUT THIS REPORT



The Star-Ledger compared more than 100 model bills written by the American Legislative Exchange Council with New Jersey legislation, executive orders and draft rules proposed by state agencies. Copies of ALEC's models were obtained through the Center for Media and Democracy, which has uploaded more than 800 bills to alecexposed.org.

E-mail records and other materials were obtained through open-public-records requests submitted to the governor’s office, the Office of Legislative Services, and several state agencies. Sen. Steven Oroho and Assemblyman Jay Webber voluntarily submitted e-mail records and reference materials.

The Star-Ledger conducted interviews over the course of several months. Campaign-finance data was available online at the website of the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.

Examples of the bill comparisons can be seen throughout this online report. To download a complete database of bill comparisons and campaign donations, and to review digital copies of all documents cited, click the link at the bottom of this report.

The ALEC model calls for a "Council for Educator Effectiveness" to decide how to evaluate teachers.

Executive Order 42 signed by the governor in September 2010 established an "Educator Effectiveness Task Force."

ALEC says the council must base at least 50 percent of a teacher’s rating on standardized test scores or similar data. Christie also ordered his task force to use a 50-percent benchmark.

Both ALEC and the governor's order set the same deadline for the task force’s report: March 1, 2011. (Christie’s task force delivered its report that day.)

The model provided by ALEC replaces tenure with yearly evaluations that would "provide a basis for making decisions in the area of hiring, compensation, promotion, assignment, professional development, earning and retaining nonprobationary status, dismissal, and nonrenewal of contract."

The executive order signed by Christie in 2010 says, "With a new statewide evaluation system, New Jersey will also be able to better address and improve school personnel policies concerning professional development, promotion, compensation, merit-based bonuses, tenure, and reductions in force and separation."

Apprised of the similarities, Drewniak pointed out that acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf is a Democrat and said Christie’s office took common education proposals from the District of Columbia, New York, Indiana and Colorado, whose teacher tenure bill later became ALEC’s model.

"There are just so many resources that are consulted," Drewniak said. "To draw any conclusion from this is just wrong and tenuous."

Drewniak would not name the policy advisers who wrote the bills.

NATURAL ALLIES

The similarities show up in other key bills:

• The newly minted S3173, better known as the Urban Hope Act, which allows nonprofit companies to run public schools in the state’s most beleaguered cities, carries the framework and key passages from ALEC’s Innovation School and School Districts Act.

• Another bill, A980, sponsored by Webber, includes much of ALEC’s Next-Generation Charter Schools Act. Both loosen training requirements for charter-school teachers and allow public colleges and universities to authorize and supervise charter schools.

The ALEC bill says: "Except as provided (add relevant citation in state code) a charter school is exempt from all statutes and rules applicable to a school, a board, or a district."

Bill A980 says: "Except as may be otherwise provided for in the performance contract, a charter school operated in accordance with the provisions of P.L 1995. c 426(c.18A:36A-1) as well as the school’s officers and employees, shall be exempt from all state laws, rules and regulations of any school board of education."

Other policy moves that don't require legislative approval also line up with ALEC blueprints, The Star-Ledger analysis shows.

For example, the state Department of Environmental Protection recently announced that it would waive any regulation deemed too burdensome for businesses or individuals, prompting environmentalists to pursue legal action. The "waiver rule" mirrors ALEC’s Pollution Control or Abatement Flexibility Act.

Rosenthal, the Rutgers University professor, said it was hard to picture ALEC as the driving force behind Christie’s policymaking. The group and the governor are natural allies, he said, in the same way Democrats traditionally take sides with teacher unions.

"They believe in the same thing," he said. "One notion of a lobbyist is that he comes in there and somehow has got to get your vote, and persuade you to vote for that bill. I don’t think there’s a lot of persuasion that has to go on with ALEC because they’re all moving in the same direction."

But Gabriela Schneider, communications director at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan government watchdog group in Washington, D.C., said the similarities in New Jersey demand greater explanation.

"The public has a right to know how these bills are being shaped," she said. "ALEC is a group that wields tremendous influence in shaping public policy that affects a huge number of people. Those same people aren’t at the table."

BEHIND THE CURTAIN

With a staff of about 30, ALEC is unique in American politics. It has an agenda, much like lobbying groups. It writes and distributes bills, sometimes taking its cues from other conservative groups. But, it’s also a think tank with a national political mission. And it is not governed by the same laws that require lobbyists’ input into a bill be disclosed.

ALEC calls itself a free-market policy group that helps states resist federal mandates, such as a major overhaul of health care laws passed by congressional Democrats and President Obama. The council says nearly 2,000 state legislators from all over the country are members, which would be about 27 percent of the 7,384 state lawmakers nationwide.

The rest of its members are representatives of nearly 300 of the biggest U.S. corporations, including Johnson & Johnson, Verizon, AT&T, Wal-Mart, Koch Industries, UPS, Exxon and Coca-Cola, as well as conservative think tanks and advocacy groups such as the National Rifle Association. Legislators and corporate officials gather at high-end resort towns several times a year to draft and update model bills.

ALEC documents show lawmakers pay $50 a year to be members. Corporations pay at least $7,000 and up to $25,000 to join — more if they want to help draft model bills as part of one of nine policymaking task forces. At least 98 percent of ALEC’s $7 million budget comes from corporations, according to its latest IRS filing. As a nonprofit 501(c)(3), ALEC is exempt from paying taxes.

Members such as Webber (R-Morris) and Sen. Steven Oroho (R-Sussex) have their choice of hundreds of model bills from the group’s online library, which is open only to those who belong to ALEC. They can also seek guidance from experts on ALEC’s staff.

IN THE STATEHOUSE

E-mails and other records obtained by The Star-Ledger show that Christie's then-chief of staff and former health commissioner were involved in an ALEC policy seminar in Trenton in December. Legislative liaisons inside the governor's office have mined ALEC for advice on budgetary matters, Medicaid changes and privatizing government services, according to e-mail records, beginning in the earliest days of Christie's governorship and as recently as December.

Christie’s former chief of staff, Richard Bagger, who had a leading role developing the administration’s policies, was a member of ALEC’s board of directors in 2002 and 2004 on behalf of Pfizer, where he was senior vice president of government affairs. Bagger left the administration on Jan. 31 to join Celgene Corp. in Summit, a pharmaceutical firm and ALEC member whose executives donated thousands of dollars to Christie’s campaign for governor. He declined interview requests.

The Republican lawmakers sponsoring Christie’s School Children First Act (A981) have signed their names to other bills nearly identical to ALEC models:

• Sen. Joseph Kyrillos (R-Monmouth), who is running for U.S. Senate, is pushing the so-called Parent Trigger Act, which allows a simple majority of parents to replace the staff of failing schools or transfer their management to private companies.

• Assemblywoman Amy Handlin (R-Monmouth) has introduced the New Jersey Right to Work Act, which prohibits unions from automatically deducting member dues from workers’ paychecks.

• Webber sponsors Christie’s bill to multiply the number of public and government institutions that can authorize charter schools.

All three denied they received the bills from ALEC. Kyrillos, who said his bill came from a pro-charter-school parent advocacy group in California, and Handlin, who said she got her bill from New Hampshire, are not ALEC members.

Christie’s office also helped design the Urban Hope Act, a new law guided through the Legislature by Sen. Donald Norcross (D-Camden). Norcross said it would reverse the tide for long-neglected failing schools and emphasized many other voices were heard before Christie signed the law in January.

"There was a free exchange of ideas between many of the stakeholders, and the governor’s office was a part of that," he said. ALEC did not come up in discussions with Christie’s advisers, he added.

William Schluter, vice chairman of the State Ethics Commission and a former Republican state senator, said there was a "clear connection between ALEC and the proposed New Jersey legislation." What’s critically missing, he said, is public disclosure about the council’s growing influence.

"I was the author of the original lobbying law in New Jersey," Schluter said. "When you get right down to it, this is not different from lobbying. It is lobbying. … Any kind of large organization that adds to public policy or has initiatives involving public policy should be disclosed — not only their name, but who is backing them."

NATIONAL INFLUENCE

Experts and watchdog groups say ALEC has supplied some of the dominant legislative proposals in Arizona, Wisconsin, Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire and Maine, among others. The bills rolled back union benefits, toughened voter-registration laws, eased environmental rules and spun off government services to the private sector.

New Jersey lawmakers have not proposed ALEC model bills from its social agenda, such as the "stand your ground" gun measure, backed by ALEC and NRA. Nor have they introduced ones to toughen voter-registration requirements, make it more difficult to get divorces and fine public colleges with lecturers not fluent in English.

Experts who study the group say legislation in the states is rarely identical to ALEC models. But in many cases, bills with the same core concepts surface — only slightly reworded and introduced by lawmakers who are ALEC members. There are times when ALEC is copied word for word, such as in a Florida resolution introduced in November urging Congress to reduce the corporate tax rate. In fact, it was copied so precisely that ALEC’s mission statement was also included by mistake (the statement was removed the next day).

"They just keep popping up," said John Dunbar, a managing editor at the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington watchdog group. "Until the legislators themselves are called on it, until the governor is called on it, until people ask, ‘Why are you doing the bidding of this group?’ It’s going to keep happening."

EDUCATION ASSISTANCE

For Christie, there is no priority bigger than reforming public education, especially in urban areas. The state poured nearly one-third of its $30 billion budget into schools this year. The governor's plans would open many new avenues for private companies to run schools funded by taxpayers.

Derrell Bradford, a charter-school advocate and a leading voice supporting Christie’s education agenda, said that although ALEC may be staunchly conservative on energy and chemical regulation, its philosophy on education is the same as many Democrats, including President Obama.

"Even though ALEC has been a longtime champion of this stuff and a great vehicle for it, a lot of these ideas are common practice," said Bradford, executive director of Better Education for Kids in New Brunswick. "The important thing is that ALEC is one of the places, and now the Christie administration is one of the places, where you see policies that are in the mainstream being amplified and practiced."

New York University professor Diane Ravitch, an expert on public schools and assistant education secretary under Republican President George H.W. Bush, said privatization doesn’t always yield results for students.

"I can’t begin to tell you how far out of the mainstream ALEC is; although given the drift of American politics, maybe by now it has become the mainstream," she said. "This is the right-wing agenda and it has been since Ronald Reagan."

BUDGETING BASICS

Christie’s budget-cutting moves have been common conservative ideas for decades. ALEC encapsulates many of them in reports written for cash-strapped states: Use line-item vetoes to trim budgets. Roll back pensions and health benefits for public workers. Freeze cost-of-living adjustments. Cut funds for mental health care. Tighten Medicaid eligibility requirements. Transition from institutional care to home- and community-based care. Privatize off-track betting.

A month before Christie’s election in 2009, Webber’s records showed ALEC prepared a comprehensive set of budget tools for New Jersey and sent it to seven GOP lawmakers.

"I have also attached 10 model bills our Tax & Fiscal Policy Task Force Director Jonathan Williams has put together as a budget reform tool kit," wrote Chaz Cirame, then ALEC’s director of corporate and nonprofit relations. "These bills are currently being used in several states by ALEC members as part of a reform agenda … that should be able to find bipartisan support."

Among the model bills Webber received was one that would create a privatization council and another that would set up an online database tracking state expenses. Webber and others had already introduced a bill to track the state’s expenses. Christie set up a privatization task force early in his governorship and launched an online budget database on his first day in office; both moves were done by executive order.

ACADEMIC CONCERNS

ALEC’s lack of transparency has concerned academics, public officials and advocacy groups, especially because its corporate backers have a financial stake in the success of the model bills, because they appear to wield veto power at ALEC meetings and because it is unclear the extent to which corporations write model bills. These experts note that while lobbyists of all political stripes also write bills, they must publicly disclose their activities.

At ALEC conferences, reporters are welcome to attend policy seminars, breakfasts and lunches. There's no way to see how model bills are written, though, because those sessions are strictly off-limits to nonmembers. ALEC's two governing boards have the final say on what gets approved — one is made up of lawmakers, the other of corporate officials. As a rule, ALEC does not disclose members' names and does not publicize its draft legislation. The Star-Ledger obtained copies of ALEC model bills from the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal advocacy group that uploaded nearly 800 of them to the internet last July.

OUTSIDE RESEARCH

Webber and Oroho, who co-chair ALEC’s state chapter, said their involvement with the group was minimal and that they have never attended the group’s conferences. Neither recalled introducing ALEC model bills.

"The most experience I’ve had with them was in 2008 in developing some legislation," Webber said, referring to the New Jersey Health Care Choice Act (A963). "I was able to speak with some of their policy analysts and through them was able to review other states’ legislation."

Oroho said he was asked to join ALEC by Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean Jr. (R-Union) for official research purposes.

"Not all great ideas generate in New Jersey," Kean said. "Understanding what’s happening in other states is helpful."

Kean, Oroho and Webber said they were not aware of any collaboration between ALEC and the governor’s office. Records show that ALEC has invited Christie to be a conference keynote speaker twice, but the governor has declined.

Webber provided copies of seven e-mails that he received from ALEC staffers from September 2009 to February 2011. Oroho gave The Star-Ledger copies of 34 e-mails he received from June 2011 to January 2012, including one listing six private-sector ALEC members from New Jersey at AT&T, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Novartis, who were set to travel to ALEC's conference in Arizona in December.

FINANCIAL HELP

Meanwhile, an examination of campaign finance records from the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission showed New Jersey legislators who are in ALEC or have introduced bills resembling ALEC models have received $202,000 from the same corporations funding the council, $57,700 since 2010.

Kyrillos, who said he hasn’t been involved with ALEC for 20 years, has collected $72,000 from ALEC members since he first became a legislator in the late 1980s.

Christie collected more than $73,000 for his gubernatorial run, Webber more than $17,000 in races for the Assembly, and Oroho nearly $7,000 while running for the state Senate.

Other ALEC members are Sens. Christopher "Kip" Bateman (R-Somerset), Anthony Bucco (R-Morris), and Gerald Cardinale (R-Bergen) and Assemblywoman Mary Pat Angelini (R-Monmouth), according to Webber.

David Weinstein, a policy adviser in the governor’s office, e-mailed ALEC staffers for guidance in the early days of Christie’s governorship — one day after the governor set up a task force to study which state services could be privatized.

"I was hoping you could put me in contact with an ALEC staffer who'd be willing to suffer through my relative ignorance on the topic while I picked his or her brain," Weinstein wrote to ALEC's communications director in early March 2010, in an e-mail provided to The Star-Ledger as part of a public records request. "This person might then speak on same with the Chair of our Task Force, former Congressman Dick Zimmer."

Weinstein received from ALEC three model bills outlining common ideas for privatization, but the Christie administration did not adopt them.

ALEC also referred Weinstein to other experts, including Leonard Gilroy of the Reason Foundation. Gilroy was listed as an adviser in the privatization task force’s May 2010 report to Christie, but ALEC’s help went unrecognized even though more than 60 unions, think tanks and corporations were acknowledged.

Drewniak said the relationship between the Christie administration and the council was inconsequential.

"There are so many think tanks and organizations out there that contribute to public policy. This is just one among literally hundreds if not thousands," he said. "To say that we are in a continuous consulting relationship would be maximizing a most minimal level of contact."

Staff writers Ted Sherman and Jessica Calefati contributed to this report.

Download a full spreadsheet of connections between ALEC models and N.J. bills.

ALEC Member Companies' Campaign Contributions:

ALEC member corporations and their executives have given more than $200,000 to New Jersey officials who are in the group or have introduced bills resembling ALEC models.

SOURCE: Records from the New Jersey Law Enforcement Commission from 1989 to 2011

Related Editorial: It may have found a loophole, but American Legislative Exchange Council is no charity