This story also appeared in Mother Jones JACKSON, Miss. — Amia Edwards lives here because she wants to make a difference. But in this majority-Black city, long starved for funding by the state’s mostly white Legislature, that’s proved a steep challenge. The city’s recent water crisis came after years of chronic underfunding of Jackson’s aging […]
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Posted inCopy, Paste, Legislate
What is ALEC? ‘The most effective organization’ for conservatives, says Newt Gingrich
The American Legislative Exchange Council became the nation’s best-known “model”-bill factory over its four decades by providing more than fill-in-the-blank legislation. This story also appeared in USA TODAY The industry-sponsored group has weathered controversy and flourished because it also offers conservative Republican elected officials a social network, access to campaign donors and a blueprint for […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Why you should care about ‘model legislation’
Americans elect their state lawmakers to … make laws. But sometimes, a lawmaker introduces a bill in his or her own name that isn’t born of thoughtful deliberation or responses to constituent needs. Rather, the lawmaker offers up what’s known as “model legislation” — prefabricated bills often written by moneyed special interests that want government […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Q&A: Rob O’Dell on lobbyists shaping state laws
We’re continuing our Q&A series on journalists who published powerful stories. We’re featuring Rob O’Dell of the Arizona Republic and USA Today. We partnered with them on our Copy, Paste, Legislate series and to help launch our model legislation tracker tool. (Thanks to our news developer Pratheek Rebala for working so hard on it!) O’Dell […]
Posted inDemocracy
New anti-protest laws cast a long shadow on First Amendment rights
This story also appeared in HuffPost and Indian Country Today Tiffany Crutcher was worried. Oklahoma lawmakers had passed a new measure stiffening penalties for protesters who block roadways and granting immunity to drivers who unintentionally hit them. The state NAACP, saying the law was passed in response to racial justice demonstrations and could chill the […]
Posted inCopy, Paste, Legislate
Puppies, phones and porn: How ‘model legislation’ affects consumers’ lives
Muhammad Hoshur, 23, loved iPhones — until he learned how to fix them. This story also appeared in USA TODAY Big industry forces “want small guys like me to go out of business even though they refuse to fix people’s phones, they just want you to get a new one,” said Hoshur, who owns three electronic […]
Posted inCopy, Paste, Legislate
If corporations write a bill, should lawmakers have to tell you? Model bill critics say yes
Full disclosure. About this report This story was produced as part of a collaboration between USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. More than 30 reporters across the country were involved in the two-year investigation, which identified copycat bills in every state. The team used a unique data-analysis engine built on […]
Posted inCopy, Paste, Legislate
Stand your ground, right to work and bathroom bills: 5 model bills that spark controversy
State lawmakers across the USA introduce model bills each year favoring Republicans, Democrats and businesses. And despite the cross-country push for legislatures to adopt these cookie-cutter bills, not all attract local or national attention. About this report This story was produced as part of a collaboration between USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center […]
Posted inCopy, Paste, Legislate
You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead.
This story was published in partnership with USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic. This story also appeared in USA TODAY Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks. Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called “model” bills get copied in one state […]
Posted inPushing Plastic
Inside the long war to protect plastic
New York’s Suffolk County had a trash problem. Facing brimming landfills and public pressure, legislators took a first-in-the-nation step: They banned plastic bags. But what the county saw as part of the solution, the plastics industry took as a threat. “We had never seen lobbyists like this before,” said Steven Englebright, the chief sponsor of the […]
Posted inCopy, Paste, Legislate
How we uncovered 10,000 times lawmakers introduced copycat model bills — and why it matters
How do you find 10,000 needles in 50 haystacks? This story also appeared in USA TODAY That, in effect, is what journalists and developers with USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic set out to do two years ago: Identify among the roughly 100,000 bills introduced in the 50 states each year what’s been copied from […]
Posted inSystem Failure
Trump’s Justice Department has a powerful tool to fight police abuse. It refuses to use it.
This story was published in partnership with Vox. The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust. Sign up to receive our stories. This story also appeared in Vox Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was about to become irrelevant. It was his last day in office. Donald Trump’s attorney general, formerly a U.S. […]
Posted inDemocracy
FEC lays bare internal conflicts and challenges in letters to Congress
The Federal Election Commission’s four leaders are offering lawmakers clashing perspectives on the agency’s very purpose. The FEC’s greatest challenge to fulfilling its mission is a misperception that “adherence to the rule of law and sensitivity to Americans’ First Amendment rights reflect hostility towards enforcing the law or, even, toward the Commission itself,” Republican commissioners […]
Posted inCopy, Paste, Legislate
The network behind state bills ‘countering’ Sharia law and terrorism
A lawmaker in Idaho introduces legislation to prevent traditional Islamic law from infiltrating U.S. courts. This story also appeared in USA TODAY In Florida, a legislator proposes striking at the foundations of terrorism with a bill bolstering victims’ ability to sue its supporters. The lawmakers’ efforts are seemingly unrelated, their statehouses almost 2,000 miles apart. […]
Posted inDemocracy
Meet the lobbyists and special interests who helped launch Pete Buttigieg’s political career
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates betrayals of public trust. Sign up to receive our stories. Pete Buttigieg has been slow to match other presidential candidates’ pledges to swear off big money in politics. At one point, Buttigieg was the only major Democratic presidential candidate still accepting money from lobbyists. Like […]
Posted inDemocracy
Asbestos concerns arise at the Federal Election Commission
Several Federal Election Commission employees are concerned they may have been unwittingly exposed to asbestos — a known carcinogen and lung irritant — while working at the agency’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters during the mid-1990s. A recent asbestos remediation notice taped to the entrance of the FEC’s former headquarters, which the agency vacated in March […]
Posted inDemocracy
Democrats plan ‘aggressive’ oversight of Federal Election Commission
For most of this decade, Congress has all but ignored the perpetually gridlocked Federal Election Commission, which exists to enforce and regulate the nation’s campaign finance laws. No longer, two Democratic congressional representatives tell the Center for Public Integrity. The bipartisan FEC is broken and needs fixing, they argue. “In the next Congress, we will be […]
Posted inDemocracy
Democratic super PAC hits jackpot with Chinese company stock
May was packed with primary congressional elections, giving political donors and special interests plenty of opportunities to try to influence outcomes. New filings with the Federal Election Commission, due Wednesday night, shed new light on last month’s campaign money battle — from Democrats cashing in on Chinese corporate stock to President Donald Trump’s comedic doppelgänger […]
Posted inState Politics
The NBA and MLB quietly hustle for a cut of the sports betting jackpot
OCEANPORT, N.J. — Monmouth Park Racetrack bet its future against long odds, and it’s about to cash in on what it hopes will be a jackpot. Five years ago, when sports betting was illegal essentially everywhere but Nevada, the 147-year-old horse racing track near the Jersey Shore invested $1.5 million in turning a drab cafeteria […]
Posted inInequality
Comcast shareholders reject lobby disclosure resolution for the fourth straight year
Comcast Corp. shareholders have for the fourth time rejected a proposal that would require the cable giant to report how much money it spends lobbying state legislatures and local governments. The resolution, offered at Comcast’s online annual shareholders meeting Thursday, also would have required the company, a heavy lobbying spender in state capitals, to report […]
Posted inInequality
5G wireless pits cities against telecoms and their friends in the FCC
March 3: This article has been updated. In his previous 27 years as a resident of Germantown, Maryland, a leafy suburb of Washington, Vietnam veteran Marc King had never attended a local government meeting. But for the past year, the retired lieutenant colonel has been to four community meetings held by Montgomery County, just north […]
Posted inDemocracy
With morale in tatters, Federal Election Commission eyes changes
Federal Election Commission leaders — dogged by abysmal staff morale and a top manager improperly obtaining employees’ confidential critiques — are considering changes to how the agency operates in a bid to restore staff trust. Chief among them: the creation of a new “ombudsman” office dedicated to investigating and resolving staff complaints and internal conflicts, […]
Posted inDemocracy
FEC inspector general says top agency official duped her into releasing confidential criticisms
A Federal Election Commission manager allegedly duped the agency’s inspector general into releasing hundreds of confidential employee comments that have lambasted poor leadership there as part of a morale study. Four current FEC staffers and one former employee with knowledge of the situation tell the Center for Public Integrity that the senior manager in question […]
Posted inState Politics
Conservative national groups battle in the states over Constitution redo
It’s only a short phrase buried in the U.S. Constitution, but it enables an unprecedented avenue to change the law of the land: If two-thirds of the states demand it, Congress “shall call a convention” for proposing constitutional amendments. A hopeless pipe dream? Actually, no; the issue is front and center right now. Some 27 […]
Posted inDemocracy
Report: FEC leaders, managers share blame for horrid morale
Bickering commissioners, ineffective managers and lousy internal communication rank among the top reasons why the Federal Election Commission staff is one of the federal government’s most bedraggled. That’s the dispiriting — if unsurprising — conclusion of a new report from the FEC’s Office of Inspector General, which for months had conducted employee surveys and interviews […]
Posted inDemocracy
Federal Election Commission: a forgotten tool in Donald Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’ effort
Donald Trump panned “pay-to-play” politics, blasted “rigged” elections and vowed to “drain the swamp” that is Washington, D.C. But Trump has so far forsaken the very government agency Congress created after Watergate to work as the nation’s campaign season Roto-Rooter. The Federal Election Commission’s six commissioners, including the agency’s three Republicans, say neither Trump nor […]
Posted inNational Security
A nonpartisan guide to national security and foreign policy issues in the presidential election (part I)
According to Hillary Clinton and her supporters, Donald Trump is crazy friendly with Russian president Vladimir Putin, a bad man who hates America and threatens its interests, and therefore Trump cannot be trusted even with U.S. intelligence secrets, much less the presidency. He is so thin-skinned and impetuous that he could drop nuclear bombs on […]
Posted inBroadband, Inequality
ALEC-based restrictions on city-run Internet at risk after FCC ruling
States that restrict municipalities from offering Internet service to residents could see their laws overturned if they based the bills on a model offered by a conservative legislative group. Many of the provisions in the model legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) were incorporated into a North Carolina law that was knocked […]
Posted inDemocracy
FEC to hackers: We’re ready this time if government shuts down
FEC Commissioner Ann Ravel. Sarah Whitmire/Center for Public Integrity Two years ago, when the federal agencies last shut down because Congress failed to fund them, Chinese hackers successfully attacked the Federal Election Commission’s computer and information technology systems. The nation’s political campaign and election regulator found itself powerless to the worst act of sabotage in […]
Posted inState Politics
States caught in tug of war over whether cops can keep your stuff
May 19, 2016: This story has been updated. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Thursday became the latest state leader to sign contentious legislation restricting civil asset forfeiture — the process that allows police to seize and keep property suspected of being connected to illegal activity, without having to convict, or even charge, the owner with […]
