With the American Legislative Exchange Council currently meeting in Charlotte with legislative stooges on plotting new corporate-agenda state legislation, Common Cause has called on state attorney generals to investigate ALEC for its compliance with tax and lobbying laws.
“ALEC, the ‘charity’ that’s not a charity and the lobby that claims it doesn’t lobby, is at it again,” said Common Cause president and CEO Bob Edgar. “The ‘task forces’ it is convening in Charlotte this weekend are about to be spoon-fed another helping of legislation written by corporate executives and lobbyists and designed to advance private interests at public expense.”
Contributions to ALEC are tax deductible, Common Cause notes, but it is no charity. It exists to work for anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-health care reform and other conservative agenda items with the help of like-thinking state legislators, nearly all of them Republican.
Common Cause had earlier complained to the IRS about ALEC’s blatant political activities as a tax-favored “charity.”
Attorney General Dustin McDaniel was on the list of 29 to whom Common Cause mailed letters. I’ve asked the office for comment on reviewing political advocacy (so blatant that Sen. Missy Irving used an ALEC employee to support her effort to torpedo health care reform legislation) by a nonprofit.
UPDATE: McDaniel’s office said he’d not yet received the letter, but a spokesman said: “Regardless, he believes that non-profits should all play by the same rules and those rules should be enforced uniformly and vigorously at the state and federal level.” Not exactly a yes or no on an examination.