Many big tech companies are breaking up with a national organization geared towards crafting free-market-based model legislation to be introduced by lawmakers, most of them conservative Republicans. Some people think Ohio will get caught in the middle of the fight. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and other major tech companies are beginning to sever ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a collection of state lawmakers, corporations and lobbyists that creates model legislation focusing on a free-market approach. While ALEC calls itself nonpartisan and says its 2,000 members are both Republicans and Democrats, ALEC has financial backing from the conservative Koch brothers, and nearly all lawmakers who identify themselves as members of ALEC are Republicans. The tech companies are saying their departure from ALEC is due to the groups alleged denial of climate change and its impact. Googles Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt may have sent the harshest message to ALEC a few weeks ago. During an interview on NPRs The Diane Rehm Show, Schmidt explained why Google decided to drop ALEC. The company has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on factwhat a shockand the facts of climate change are not in question anymore everyone understands that climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place and so we should not be aligned with such people.
Theyre just literally lying.
Its simply false," responds Republican Senator Bill Seitz of Cincinnati. He's an ALEC board member and adamantly refutes accusations that ALEC doesnt take climate change seriously. Seitz says its ALEC thats been the target of several left-wing groups, and the claim that ALEC denies climate change is part of that attack. And the CEO of these big companies sits in his ivory tower and decides, well, without even checking most of the time. Well I guess the easy path of least resistance I guess is to resign from any group that they target. The Natural Resources Defense Council is one of those groups sounding off against ALEC. NRDC Spokesperson Josh Mogerman insists that ALEC is denying climate change behind closed doors. He adds Ohios connection with ALEC will not bode well when it comes to attracting jobs. It certainly doesnt imply that Ohio is open for business for tech companies if theyre signaling that they want to go in a clean energy directionsending a letter that says thats not what were going to do in Ohio isnt a really good way to woe tech jobs to a state that I think is very interested in them. ALEC sent a letter to Google criticizing Schmidts comments on the radio and the companys departure. The note was signed by more than 200 ALEC members, including six Ohio legislators. Earlier this year the Ohio General Assembly passed a bill to freeze the states renewable and energy efficiency standards an effort spearheaded by Seitz. The NRDCs Mogerman says thats another reflection on ALECs position. ALEC is one of the chief architects of the effort in Ohio to roll back what have been very successful energy efficiency and renewable energy standard that have been saving Ohioans lots of money on their bill and had been diversifying the energy system for the state of Ohio. Seitz counters that 21 states have never had renewable energy mandatesand 25 states dont have any energy efficiency mandates. So does Seitz think Ohios standards freeze or its connection with ALEC will detract tech companies?
If theyre saying that theyre only going to invest in states that such mandates it is Google (and other companies) who are writing off roughly half of the United States...I dont think they really want to do that.
Seitz also disputes Mogermans assessment that the green energy standards were very successful. The two-year freeze allows a panel of legislators to perform a cost-benefit analysis on the benchmarksto find out if ratepayers are saving money or not with the standards.