On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2011, Flori­da State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Dor­worth (R‑Lake Mary) intro­duced HB 1021. The bill sought to cur­tail the polit­i­cal pow­er of unions by pro­hibit­ing pub­lic employ­ers from deduct­ing any amount from an employee’s pay for use by an employ­ee orga­ni­za­tion (i.e., union dues) or for any polit­i­cal activ­i­ty (i.e., the por­tion of union dues used for lob­by­ing or for sup­port­ing can­di­dates for office).

Fur­ther­more, HB 1021 stat­ed that, should a union seek to use any por­tion of dues inde­pen­dent­ly col­lect­ed from mem­bers for polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, the union must obtain annu­al writ­ten autho­riza­tion from each member.

In effect, this bill defunds pub­lic-sec­tor unions – like AFSCME, SEIU, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers and the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion – by mak­ing the col­lec­tion of mem­ber dues an oner­ous, cost­ly task. With pub­lic-sec­tor unions dena­tured, they would no longer be able to stand in the way of rad­i­cal free mar­ke­teers who plan to prof­it from the pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic services.

Giv­en the sim­i­lar­i­ties between HB 1021 and a rash of like-mind­ed bills in states across the coun­try, includ­ing Wis­con­sin, on March 30 a pub­lic records request was sent to Dorworth’s office seek­ing copies of all doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the writ­ing of HB 1021, includ­ing copies of any pieces of mod­el leg­is­la­tion the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC) may have provided.

With­in an hour of sub­mit­ting this request, Flori­da House Speak­er Dean Cannon’s (R‑Winter Park) Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Kather­ine Bet­ta respond­ed: ​“We received a note from Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dorworth’s office regard­ing your request for records relat­ing to the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil and HB 1021. Please note that Mr. Dorworth’s leg­isla­tive offices did not receive any mate­ri­als from ALEC relat­ing to this bill or any ​‘mod­el leg­is­la­tion’ from oth­er states.”

But two weeks lat­er Dorworth’s office deliv­ered 87 pages of doc­u­ments, most­ly bill drafts and emails, detail­ing the evo­lu­tion of what was to become HB 1021. Buried at the bot­tom of the stack was an 11-page bun­dle of neat­ly typed mate­r­i­al, labeled ​“Pay­check Pro­tec­tion,” which con­sist­ed of three pieces of mod­el leg­is­la­tion, with the words ​“Copy­right, ALEC” at the end of each.

Dor­worth leg­isla­tive assis­tant Car­olyn John­son claims that, although Dor­worth is an ALEC mem­ber, nei­ther she nor her boss have any idea how the ALEC mod­el leg­is­la­tion found its way into Dorworth’s office. Dor­worth could not be reached for comment.

Enter the Koch Brothers

Nov. 2, 2010 saw a rad­i­cal cohort of Repub­li­cans swept into office in states across the country.

When the leg­isla­tive ses­sions began in Jan­u­ary, the Amer­i­can news-con­sum­ing pub­lic was shocked by the tenac­i­ty of this new breed of Grand Old Parti­er as it set to the task of break­ing pub­lic employ­ee unions, dis­man­tling state gov­ern­ment and pri­va­tiz­ing civic services.

While bat­tles still rage in the nation’s leg­is­la­tures and state­hous­es, main­stream media atten­tion peaked in Feb­ru­ary and March with the cul­mi­na­tion of the fight over Gov. Scott Walker’s bud­get bill AB 11, which sought to cur­tail the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing rights of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and thus dis­em­pow­er Wisconsin’s pub­lic sec­tor unions.

When on Feb­ru­ary 23 the Buf­fa­lo Beast pub­lished record­ings and tran­scripts of a prank call to Walk­er from a Beast reporter pos­ing as bil­lion­aire GOP donor David Koch, it became appar­ent how inti­mate­ly involved broth­ers David and Charles Koch were in Walker’s efforts to break pub­lic sec­tor unions.

Sub­se­quent­ly, blog­gers and edi­to­ri­al­ists began bat­ting around pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios involv­ing myr­i­ad right-wing pub­lic pol­i­cy foun­da­tions fund­ed by the Koch broth­ers and pro­ceeds of Wichi­ta, Kan.-based Koch Indus­tries (and oth­er Koch-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions). Dur­ing such spec­u­la­tion, one name arose as the favorite vil­lain behind the mul­ti­tude of bills aimed square­ly at pub­lic employ­ee unions. That name was ALEC (see side­bar detail­ing the organization’s Koch connections).

An exhaus­tive analy­sis of thou­sands of pages of doc­u­ments obtained through pub­lic records requests from six states, as well as tax fil­ings, lob­by reports, leg­isla­tive drafts and court records, reveal that these sud­den­ly pop­u­lar anti-pub­lic employ­ee bills, while tak­ing dif­fer­ent forms from state to state, were indeed dis­sem­i­nat­ed as ​“mod­el leg­is­la­tion” by ALEC.

Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, bills sim­i­lar to those in Flori­da and Wis­con­sin have been intro­duced in Ari­zona, Cal­i­for­nia, Illi­nois, Iowa, Indi­ana, Kansas, Maine, Mary­land, Michi­gan, Min­neso­ta, Mis­souri, North Car­oli­na, New Hamp­shire, New Jer­sey, New Mex­i­co, Ohio, Okla­homa, Rhode Island, Ten­nessee, Texas, Utah and Vermont.

The pur­port­ed goal of this nation­wide move­ment has been to reduce the bud­getary bur­den posed by pub­lic employ­ee salaries by lim­it­ing the right of pub­lic employ­ees to col­lec­tive­ly bar­gain for pay and oth­er ben­e­fits. These restric­tions, along with ​“pay­check pro­tec­tion” laws, cur­tail the polit­i­cal pow­er of pub­lic employ­ee unions by cut­ting off funds for polit­i­cal cam­paign and lob­by­ing expen­di­tures. These mea­sures would effec­tive­ly thwart attempts by pub­lic employ­ee unions to resist pri­va­ti­za­tion of gov­ern­ment func­tions and to sup­port can­di­dates oppos­ing elect­ed offi­cials who vote for cor­po­rate give­aways of pub­lic resources.

‘ Pub­li­copoly’ in play

ALEC con­tends that gov­ern­ment agen­cies have an unfair monop­oly on pub­lic goods and ser­vices. To change that sit­u­a­tion, it has cre­at­ed a pol­i­cy ini­tia­tive to counter what it calls ​“Pub­li­copoly.” ALEC’s stat­ed aim is to pro­vide ​“more effec­tive, effi­cient gov­ern­ment” via pri­va­ti­za­tion – that is, the shift­ing of gov­ern­ment func­tions to the pri­vate sec­tor. ALEC lists its ini­tia­tives on its web­site (alec​.org/​p​u​b​l​i​c​opoly).

Though the specifics are secret and ​“restrict­ed to mem­bers,” ALEC open­ly advo­cates pri­va­tiz­ing pub­lic edu­ca­tion, trans­porta­tion and the reg­u­la­tion of pub­lic health, con­sumer safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal qual­i­ty includ­ing bring­ing in cor­po­ra­tions to administer:

Fos­ter care, adop­tion ser­vices and child sup­port pay­ment processing.

School sup­port ser­vices such as cafe­te­ria meals, cus­to­di­al staff and transportation.

High­way sys­tems, with toll roads pre­sent­ed as a shin­ing example.

Sur­veil­ing and detain­ing con­vict­ed criminals.

Ensur­ing the qual­i­ty of waste­water treat­ment, drink­ing water, and sol­id waste ser­vices and facil­i­ties. (After all, when some­one men­tions a safe and secure pub­lic water sup­ply, the voter’s next imme­di­ate thought is: ​“Only if it’s cost-effective!”)

To accom­plish these ini­tia­tives, ALEC con­tends that ​“state gov­ern­ments can take an active role in deter­min­ing which prod­ucts and ser­vices should be pri­va­tized.” ALEC advo­cates three reforms: cre­at­ing a ​“Pri­vate Enter­prise Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee” to review if gov­ern­ment agen­cies unfair­ly com­pete with the pri­vate sec­tor; cre­at­ing a spe­cial coun­cil that would con­tract with pri­vate ven­dors if they can ​“reduce the cost of gov­ern­ment”; and cre­at­ing leg­is­la­tion that would require gov­ern­ment agen­cies to demon­strate ​“com­pelling pub­lic inter­est” in order to con­tin­ue as pub­lic agen­cies. (Who then over­sees these com­mit­tees to ensure the pri­vate sec­tor doesn’t unfair­ly prof­it by monop­o­liz­ing pub­lic goods and ser­vices? One can only assume it is the same ​“Pri­vate Enter­prise Advi­so­ry Committee.”)

ALEC nuts and bolts

ALEC is a 501(c)(3) not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that in recent years has report­ed about $6.5 mil­lion in annu­al rev­enue. ALEC’s mem­bers include cor­po­ra­tions, trade asso­ci­a­tions, think tanks and near­ly a third (about 2,000) of the nation’s state leg­is­la­tors (vir­tu­al­ly all Repub­li­can). Accord­ing to the group’s pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al, ALEC’s mis­sion is to ​“advance the Jef­fer­son­ian prin­ci­ples of free mar­kets, lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment, fed­er­al­ism, and indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty, through a non­par­ti­san pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship of America’s state leg­is­la­tors, mem­bers of the pri­vate sec­tor, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and gen­er­al public.”

ALEC cur­rent­ly claims more than 250 cor­po­ra­tions and spe­cial inter­est groups as pri­vate sec­tor mem­bers. While the orga­ni­za­tion refus­es to make a com­plete list of these pri­vate mem­bers avail­able to the pub­lic, some known mem­bers include Exxon Mobil, the Cor­rec­tions Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca, AT&T, Pfiz­er Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Time Warn­er Cable, Com­cast, Ver­i­zon, Wal-Mart, Phillip Mor­ris Inter­na­tion­al and Koch Indus­tries, along with a host of right-wing think tanks and foundations.

ALEC is com­posed of nine task forces – (1) Pub­lic Safe­ty and Elec­tions, (2) Civ­il Jus­tice, (3) Edu­ca­tion, (4) Ener­gy, Envi­ron­ment and Agri­cul­ture, (5) Com­merce, Insur­ance and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment, (6) Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, (7) Health and Human Ser­vices, (8) Tax and Fis­cal Pol­i­cy and (9) Inter­na­tion­al Rela­tions – each com­prised of ​“Pub­lic Sec­tor” mem­bers (leg­is­la­tors) and ​“Pri­vate Sec­tor” mem­bers (cor­po­ra­tions and inter­est groups).

Each of these task forces, which serve as the core of ALEC’s oper­a­tions, gen­er­ate mod­el leg­is­la­tion that is then passed on to mem­ber law­mak­ers for intro­duc­tion in their home assem­blies. Accord­ing to ALEC pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al, each year mem­ber law­mak­ers intro­duce an aver­age of 1,000 of these pieces of leg­is­la­tion nation­wide, 17 per­cent of which are enact­ed. For 2009, ALEC claimed a total of 826 pieces of intro­duced leg­is­la­tion nation­wide, 115 of which were passed into law – slight­ly below the aver­age at 14 per­cent. ALEC does not offer its mod­el leg­is­la­tion for pub­lic inspection.

ALEC refused to com­ment on any aspect of the mate­r­i­al cov­ered here.

‘ Pay­check Protection’

The three pieces of mod­el leg­is­la­tion con­tained in the ALEC ​“Pay­check Pro­tec­tion” bun­dle (archived at dba​press​.com here) pro­vid­ed by Rep. Dorworth’s office were titled ​“Employ­ee Rights Reform Act,” ​“Labor Orga­ni­za­tion Deduc­tions Act” and ​“Polit­i­cal Fund­ing Reform Act.”

Employ­ee Rights Reform Act (ERRA): This bill estab­lish­es lim­i­ta­tions on fees that may be charged to nonunion pub­lic employ­ees who are part of a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing unit rep­re­sent­ed by a union.

ERRA states that no nonunion pub­lic employ­ee may have more than a pro­por­tion­ate share of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing union costs with­held from their pay by a pub­lic employ­er. Charge­able activ­i­ties are defined as expen­di­tures for pur­pos­es of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing, con­tract admin­is­tra­tion and griev­ance adjust­ment. ERRA states that whether or not a pub­lic employ­er can deduct funds from a pub­lic employ­ees pay for polit­i­cal activ­i­ty – union orga­niz­ing cam­paigns, con­tribut­ing to polit­i­cal cam­paigns of elect­ed offi­cials, lob­by­ing on behalf of their mem­bers, or rais­ing mon­ey from their mem­bers to pay for union orga­niz­ing cam­paigns – is depen­dent on ​“con­trol­ling court decisions.”

Labor Orga­ni­za­tions Deduc­tions Act (LODA): This is the only piece of the ​“Pay­check Pro­tec­tion” tril­o­gy not aimed specif­i­cal­ly at pub­lic employ­ee unions (although the bill does name both the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion and the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers as enti­ties that must com­ply with restric­tions). LODA estab­lish­es a strin­gent set of cri­te­ria gov­ern­ing the means through which any labor orga­ni­za­tion may col­lect and use funds for polit­i­cal activ­i­ty, such as lob­by­ing, elec­toral and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties, includ­ing con­tri­bu­tions to any can­di­date, par­ty or vot­er reg­is­tra­tion campaign.

LODA estab­lish­es crim­i­nal penal­ties for any labor orga­ni­za­tion found to have made a polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion derived from dues or any oth­er fee paid by union mem­bers. Fur­ther, LODA pro­hibits unions from solic­it­ing funds for polit­i­cal use from any indi­vid­ual oth­er than union mem­bers and their imme­di­ate fam­i­ly members.

Polit­i­cal Fund­ing Reform Act (PFRA): While ERRA and LODA seek to sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it the amount and type of funds that may be deduct­ed from employ­ee pay – par­tic­u­lar­ly as those funds may apply to union polit­i­cal activ­i­ty – PFRA is designed to elim­i­nate all with­hold­ing of pub­lic employ­ee pay for use in any polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. Sim­ply put, under PFRA, unions would have to raise mon­ey for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es by direct­ly fundrais­ing to their mem­bers or oth­er union supporters.

Flori­da: A case study

In the case of Florida’s HB 1021, e‑mails pro­vid­ed by Rep. Dorworth’s office through a pub­lic records request reflect that the ini­tial ver­sion of the bill had been draft­ed in Jan­u­ary by then-Flori­da Cham­ber of Com­merce (FCoC) Vice Pres­i­dent of Gov­ern­ment Affairs Adam Babing­ton. A mem­ber of the FCoC Foundation’s board of trustees, Cin­cy Mar­siglio, the senior man­ag­er of pub­lic affairs and gov­ern­ment rela­tions in Flori­da for Wal-Mart, is the Flori­da ALEC ​“pri­vate sec­tor” chair (see side­bar below for more on ALEC’s pub­lic and pri­vate chairs). Babington’s orig­i­nal draft (evi­dent­ly based on ALEC ​“Pay­check Pro­tec­tion” mod­el leg­is­la­tion) under­went a revi­sion aimed at cur­tail­ing the polit­i­cal activ­i­ty of pub­lic employ­ee unions. This revi­sion was made by Flori­da State Sen­ate staff who were work­ing with Babing­ton to cre­ate a Sen­ate com­pan­ion ver­sion of the bill.

This com­pan­ion bill, SB 830, was spon­sored by Sen. John Thrash­er (R‑Jacksonville). Thrash­er worked for the influ­en­tial Tal­la­has­see lob­by firm of South­ern Strat­e­gy Group, Inc., from 2002 through his elec­tion to the Flori­da Sen­ate in 2009, where he rep­re­sent­ed sev­er­al FCoC and ALEC mem­ber cor­po­ra­tions, many with inter­ests in the pri­va­ti­za­tion of state gov­ern­men­tal func­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of men­tal health and health­care ser­vice contracting).

The pri­ma­ry actor on the Sen­ate end of HB 1021’s for­ma­tion was Andy Bar­dos, spe­cial coun­sel to Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Mike Hari­dopo­los (R‑Merrit Island). After a strin­gent anti-pub­lic employ­ee union dues col­lect­ing pro­vi­sion was added by Bar­dos, Babing­ton wrote in an e‑mail to Dor­worth and John­son: ​“So, pay­check pro­tec­tion is about to go on steroids. Appar­ent­ly the Sen­ate wants to be more aggressive.”

Bar­dos, pri­or to join­ing the office of Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Hari­dopo­los in ear­ly 2011, had worked since 2005 for the Flori­da law firm of Gray­Robin­son as an attor­ney spe­cial­iz­ing in gov­ern­men­tal affairs.

Bar­dos’ for­mer col­league, Gray­Robin­son attor­ney Fred Leon­hardt, is cur­rent­ly on the board of direc­tors of the FCoC, of which he was the for­mer chair. Leon­hardt is a mem­ber of Enter­prise Flori­da, Inc., a ​“pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship” that works as the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment arm of the state.

Anoth­er direc­tor of Enter­prise Flori­da is for­mer Flori­da House Speak­er Allan Bense (R‑Panama City). Bense is the present chair­man of FCoC, who derives a large por­tion of his annu­al income from a com­pa­ny he co-owns: GAC Con­trac­tors, Inc. As report­ed on his 2009 state­ment of finan­cial inter­ests (filed pur­suant to his mem­ber­ship on the board of the qua­si-pub­lic Enter­prise Flori­da), Bense held near­ly $5 mil­lion in GAC ass­sets, much of which was mon­ey earned from con­tracts to repair state and fed­er­al highways.

GAC is a promi­nent mem­ber of Asso­ci­at­ed Builders and Con­trac­tors, Inc. (ABC), which through its leg­isla­tive efforts seeks to encour­age the free flow of pub­lic-sec­tor cash to nonunion pri­vate com­pa­nies. ABC bills itself as being the nonunion ​“con­struc­tion industry’s voice with­in the leg­isla­tive, exec­u­tive and judi­cial branch­es” of gov­ern­ment. The bun­dled ​“Pay­check Pro­tec­tion” pack­age con­tain­ing ERRA, LODA and PFRA in Dorworth’s office had orig­i­nat­ed in ABC’s 2010 ​“leg­isla­tive handbook.”

In addi­tion to his FCoC, GAC and ABC con­nec­tions, Bense is chair of the Flori­da-based, Koch-fund­ed, ALEC-mem­ber pub­lic pol­i­cy foun­da­tion, the James Madi­son Insti­tute (JMI). FCoC baord mem­ber Leon­hardt serves on the JMI board with Bense.

When asked why the FCoC was so deeply con­cerned with pro­tect­ing the pay­checks of pub­lic employ­ees (to the point where FCoC top lob­by­ists were draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to such effect), FCoC Direc­tor of Pub­lic Affairs Edie Ous­ley declined to comment.

Both HB 1021 and SB 830 died in their respec­tive cham­bers fol­low­ing pres­sure exert­ed on the FCoC by pub­lic employ­ee union members.

Accord­ing to mate­ri­als obtained through a pub­lic records request, news of a large-scale oppo­si­tion action made its way back to Dor­worth in the form of an e‑mail from Ous­ley, with the terse sub­ject line ​“here’s the issue.” That e‑mail con­tained a press release from a coali­tion of unions known as Florid­i­ans Out­raged at the Cham­ber of Commerce’s Attack on Work­ers, which read in part: ​“Wednes­day, April 20…Workers respond to attacks from the Cham­ber of Com­merce… Labor orga­ni­za­tions and mem­bers with­drew close to $10 mil­lion in funds from the Chamber’s largest banks.” The press release went on to indi­cate that the group was pre­pared to issue fur­ther ​“wave(s) of with­drawals” and oth­er actions.

Weeks lat­er, on May 7, the bills’ spon­sors with­drew both bills from leg­isla­tive hear­ings calendars.

ALEC openly advocates privatizing public education, transportation and the regulation of public health, consumer safety and environmental quality.