The American Legislative Exchange Council doesn’t like clean energy. And ALEC doesn’t care about free markets.
Like most of its operations, ALEC won’t talk about these realities in an open way. I tried at ALEC’s recent Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas, but ALEC staffer John Eick stood by his organization’s reputation for secrecy and deflected my questions.
The question I posed references a debacle within ALEC’s Energy, Environment & Agriculture task force meeting, of which Mr. Eick is the director. Wisconsin state Representative Chris Taylor was in the meeting–not as a politician carrying water for coal and oil companies, but to provide the transparency that ALEC won’t.
Writing for The Progressive, Rep. Taylor illustrated a rare debate within the ALEC task force that has made a mission of attacking clean energy incentives and taxing homeowners who put solar panels on their roofs.
ALEC’s John Eick has referred to such self-sufficient homeowners as “freeriders on the system,” asserting they should pay monopolistic utility companies like Duke Energy for selling their excess solar electricity back into the grid.
Despite his suggestion that I arrange an interview at the appropriate time by sending an email, I have not heard back from Mr. Eick after repeated attempts.
ALEC free markets rhetoric is a thin guise.
Check out how the ALEC free markets mantra is contradicted by its roster of dirty energy bills.
