The expansion of private school choice has been one of the greatest public policy victories of the decade thus far. Back in 2020, no state offered vouchers or other private school options to every child. Now, nearly 20 do.
It’s been an effort that required many hands, but one key actor has been the American Legislative Exchange Council, better known as ALEC. “ALEC was a big part of that,” says Patricia Rucker, a West Virginia state senator who sponsored a pioneering school choice bill. “The fact that we have an organization like ALEC, where we can share our successes and how we did it, is a big part of getting the message out.”
As if to amplify the point, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon told legislators and lobbyists gathered for ALEC’s annual meeting in Indianapolis on Wednesday that her chief of staff had informed her that when they’re looking for legislation, they “just pull it off from ALEC.”
That is the kind of influence ALEC has long had in conservative circles. Over the past half-century, ALEC — which brings together conservative state lawmakers with business groups to craft model legislation on topics ranging from tax cuts to energy expansion — has helped shape thousands of laws. “Governing is hard,” says Lisa Nelson, ALEC’s CEO. “It’s a challenge, and it's hard. But I don't know that any of our legislators are not eager for that role.”
Governing spoke with ALEC’s top leaders, including Nelson; Rucker, who serves as the group’s national chair; and Jonathan Williams, its president. Here are edited excerpts from that interview:
Governing: You’re largely supportive of President Donald Trump’s agenda. What have been the highlights for you so far in this term?
Nelson: It's great to have an administration that that we can work with, that has a lot of the same messages that we push out. Most importantly, the president is trying to push power back to the states, and that's exactly our message of federalism.
(Alan Greenblatt/Governing)
Williams: We went from the Biden administration when it seemed like the common theme was, how do we federalize more in Washington, D.C., and have the federal government control more, to now having a willing partner in the White House that is actively trying to decentralize power back to the states. If you go agency by agency, you see different initiatives getting to the cost of federal funds.
On Medicaid specifically, what we've seen and heard from our members, at least from the 10 states that decided wisely, in our view, not to expand with the so-called Affordable Care Act, is that they made the right decision. They were being bribed with their own money and offered the free lunch. There’s a lot of thinking in retrospect about how, hey, we did the wise thing by not jumping to take that so-called free money. With work requirements, I think there's exploration right now of states trying to figure out how this transition period will work, and a lot of good questions being asked of the administration, but I think states are ready to lead on this.
Rucker: I want to just say one thing which is personal to me. There’s got to be a reduction of regulations. I'm from one of the states that's most heavily dependent on the federal government. Reducing the money to the states is fine and great, but those regulations that were put in place with that money have to go away, too.
Governing: There’s some nervousness about the economy right now and state tax revenues have slowed. What are your thoughts on the fiscal landscape?
Williams: We’ve seen the all-time high surpluses starting to dwindle, and now we're seeing red ink for the first time in a number of years. But we're optimistic. We just passed one of the best pieces of tax reform in a generation. We're talking about permanent tax relief that's going to get rid of a lot of this economic uncertainty that's been plaguing us and keeping capital on the sidelines.
At the state level, a lot of the conservative states have already worked to eliminate their income tax. Mississippi and Oklahoma this year voted to start the phase-out of the personal income tax. Kentucky is already in the process of phasing it out. Eight states coming out of the pandemic have become flat tax states, and that’s great progress.
Governing: As you’ve gathered for this meeting, what are some of the other top issues you want to address and what are you hearing from your members about their concerns?
Nelson: We launched two new task forces this year. One was veterans and military affairs. And then the second one is process and procedures. We have a lot of legislators who, for two or three meetings, were coming to working groups and more informal gatherings and showing that they had an interest in us leading on veterans issues and on the election issues. Looking at election integrity issues, it just became really apparent that we needed to have something here as a trusted solution.
Williams: If you talk to anybody in the states, there's obviously more need for affordable, reliable energy, with demand being up with data centers and AI and all the different things which are positives. I mean, we want the United States to be a leader in that versus countries around the world. But there's going to be a real strain on our grid. We're already seeing that. There are lots of discussions in our energy task force here and even at our board meeting and our leadership discussions around the question of how we provide that extra supply of affordable, reliable energy.
We have some great ALEC pieces of model policy on that, including one that just became law in Louisiana, which is actually getting to a more rational definition of nuclear and natural gas for the purposes of defining what clean and green energy look like.
