Cncl of State Chambers COSC

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">918 declared generic for state level</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Honoring Reconstruction's legacy: Empowering local communities</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After former Confederate states drafted progressive constitutions that allowed black men to hold office for the first time, there was violent resistance to black power at the local level. During the Jim Crow era, legislatures rewrote those constitutions to give themselves broad power to override local governments.&nbsp;(9/26/2018)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em;"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://default.salsalabs.org/T05fb43df-e684-4cfc-a7bd-4385de3dbd9c/da4155fc-1ea7-11e6-8ef9-12c35146c141" style="overflow-wrap: break-word;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Read More ></font></a></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New state constitutions adopted in the South after the Civil War gave black men the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/09/honoring-reconstructions-legacy-freedom-vote" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">right to vote</a>&nbsp;and hold office. People who had been slaves were elected to positions in county governments that were formerly dominated by plantation owners and wealthy elites.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both; margin: 0px 0px 1.25em;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">Under the Reconstruction constitutions, black men were elected to more than</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">&nbsp;</span><a href="https://mahoneyhistory.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/continuingthewar.pdf" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">1,100 local offices</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">across the South, mostly in rural areas. Black sheriffs, magistrates, and election officials impacted the everyday lives of newly free people and were crucial to securing their rights under new state constitutions. Even in communities where blacks did not control local offices, "the advent of Republican rule on the local level — especially when black votes proved crucial in elections — could make an immense difference to freed inhabitants," according to historian Steven Hahn's Pulitzer Prize-winning</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674017658" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">book</a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;">, "A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration."</span></p><div class="article-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 60px;"><div class="field-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 30px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Black politicians at the time noted the intense backlash that black local officials encountered. Georgia state legislator Henry McNeal Turner, for example,&nbsp;<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=yk9VczyvtR8C&pg=PT17&lpg=PT17&dq=%252525252522but+they+do+not+want+the+negroes+over+them+at+home.%2525252525E2%252525252580%25252525259D&source=bl&ots=pC7BXFAdMu&sig=N2d6F_XddLDqm76f1sD_7BvhNB8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKtLOPp9TdAhUGrFMKHQirAS4Q6AEwAHoECAIQAQ%25252523v=onepage&q=%252525252522but%252525252520they%252525252520do%252525252520not%252525252520want%252525252520the%252525252520negroes%252525252520over%252525252520them%252525252520at%252525252520home.%2525252525E2%252525252580%25252525259D&f=false#v=onepage&q=%252525252522but%252525252520they%252525252520do%252525252520not%252525252520want%252525252520the%252525252520negroes%252525252520over%252525252520them%252525252520at%252525252520home.%2525252525E2%252525252580%25252525259D&f=false" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">said</a>&nbsp;that whites "do not care so much about Congress admitting negroes to their halls … but they do not want the negroes over them at home."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The growth in black political power led to a violent backlash from conservatives and elites who had benefited from the old system. Across the South, the Ku Klux Klan and violent mobs intimidated black voters and assassinated their local leaders. In Graham, North Carolina, a black town commissioner and elected constable named Wyatt Outlaw&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23522167?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">was lynched</a>&nbsp;outside the Alamance County courthouse "because he was a politician," according to a local KKK member. "There was no other crime alleged."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the federal government abandoned the South to white supremacists, state legislatures again rewrote constitutions to give themselves sweeping control over local governments, including enclaves of black political power.</font></p><h2 class="h3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Upending an aristocratic system</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some of the Reconstruction constitutions drafted a century-and-a-half ago set up new local government systems to supplant the aristocratic, county-based systems that enforced the harsh rules of slave society. The drafters of the 1868 North Carolina Constitution sought to replace the county system, centered on protecting private property, with "local democratic participation geared toward gathering the community together to make progress together," as Harvard Law professor Daniel Farbman&nbsp;<a href="https://www.academia.edu/27625677/Reconstructing_Local_Government" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">wrote</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under Article VII of North Carolina's Reconstruction constitution, each county would be&nbsp;<a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/676166/summary" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">divided into townships</a>, which were intended to undermine the county governments dominated by wealthy landowners. Farbman described the theory behind the change: "Townships create political engagement, which forms new political communities, which, in turn, train citizens in the arts of self-government and create the circumstances for economic and cultural progress."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In "A Nation Under Our Feet," Hahn describes the base of black political power that developed in Warren County, North Carolina, and "withstood the full onslaught" of the so-called "redeemers" fighting to maintain the antebellum system. Hahn said this may have set the conditions for economic progress for free black people, noting that one-third of black farmers in the county worked their own land by 1900.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />&nbsp;&nbsp;<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />But conservatives opposed the township system and campaigned to end it with appeals to racism and fear of "Negro rule." In 1876, constitutional amendments restored to the North Carolina legislature much of the power it had lost in 1868, including the power to remove and replace elected local governments. In his&nbsp;<a href="https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3465&context=nclr" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">history</a>&nbsp;of the North Carolina Constitution, John Orth said the amendment allowing the legislature to remove elected local officials was targeted at the counties in the eastern part of the state, where blacks were the majority.</font></p><h2 class="h3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Preempting cities today</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A similar story played out in Alabama, where constitutional amendments adopted at the end of Reconstruction severely limited local government authority. An entirely new constitution was adopted in 1901 with the express purpose of "establish[ing] white supremacy in this state," and it gave the legislature&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alabamaheritage.com/from-the-vault/why-alabama-needs-a-new-constitution" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">virtually unlimited power</a>&nbsp;over municipalities.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A federal appeals court recently took note of this history when it&nbsp;<a href="http://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201711009.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">struck down</a>&nbsp;a 2016 Alabama law banning local minimum wage increases for violating the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause. In 2015, Birmingham enacted an ordinance requiring its workers to be paid at least $10.10 per hour, but the wage increase lasted only one day. The legislature swiftly passed a law preempting local minimum wage ordinances. The NAACP, its allies, and a group of fast food workers filed suit over the preemption law.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its ruling in the case, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted the disparate impact of a law that "immediately denied a significant wage increase to roughly 40,000 Birmingham residents, the vast majority of whom were black." The court also pointed to the problematic racial dynamics surrounding the law's passage: The preemption bill was introduced by a legislator from a Birmingham suburb where only 1.5 percent of residents are black; it was cosponsored by 52 legislators, all of them white; and it was enacted despite every black legislator voting against it.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 11th Circuit rejected the argument that further proof of discriminatory intent was required. "Today, racism is no longer pledged from the portico of the capitol or exclaimed from the floor of the constitutional convention; it hides, abashed, cloaked beneath ostensibly neutral laws," the decision stated.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>North Carolina legislators also have constitutional authority to preempt local laws,</b>&nbsp;and in 2015 they exercised this power in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article68401147.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">House Bill 2</a>, the notorious anti-transgender rights bill. In addition to requiring transgender people to use restrooms that don't conform to their gender identities, H.B. 2 was also a preemption bill that banned local minimum wage and civil rights ordinances.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, nearly every Southern state has preempted local minimum wage increases. These laws have been passed&nbsp;<a href="http://prospect.org/article/blue-cities-battle-red-states" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">in response</a>&nbsp;to recent efforts by big cities, which include more non-white residents, to increase wages for the lowest paid workers.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[min wge outlaw map]</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A 2016 article in the American Prospect&nbsp;<a href="http://prospect.org/article/blue-cities-battle-red-states" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">noted</a>&nbsp;that the rise in laws limiting local authority came "as Republicans have captured an unprecedented number of state legislatures and as cities have become hotbeds for progressive organizing." The American Legislative Exchange Council, which promotes corporate interests in statehouses, even offers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alec.org/model-policy/living-wage-mandate-preemption-act/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">model preemption legislation</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Southern state legislatures&nbsp;<a href="https://academic.oup.com/publius/article/47/3/403/3852645" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">have preempted</a>&nbsp;local ordinances designed to protect the environment, workers, immigrants, consumers, and others. The Partnership for Working Families, a national network of racial and economic justice advocates,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.forworkingfamilies.org/blog/states-preempting-local-laws-are-extension-jim-crow" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">observes</a>&nbsp;that "preemption legislation is often passed by predominantly white legislatures blocking laws benefiting and supported by majority communities of color."</font></p><h2 class="h3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 25px; margin-bottom: 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The crucial role of state courts</font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though most state constitutions give legislatures broad authority over local governments, laws that limit local government authority can sometimes violate state constitutions. The Florida Supreme Court, for example, will soon hear&nbsp;<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article218296535.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">a lawsuit</a>&nbsp;over a local minimum wage ordinance in Miami Beach.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That state's 1868 constitutional convention was dominated by more conservative factions, and its Reconstruction constitution gave state legislators broad power over local government. The Florida legislature has not hesitated to use this power, such as in 2003, when it passed a law barring cities and counties from increasing the local minimum wage. The following year, voters responded by amending the state constitution to allow local governments to do so.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The city of Miami Beach, where an earlier attempted wage increase had prompted the 2003 preemption law, then increased its minimum wage to $13.31 per hour. The Florida Chamber of Commerce and its allies sued the city, arguing that the preemption law remained in force. A lower court&nbsp;<a href="http://src.bna.com/Btu" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">agreed</a>, but the state Supreme Court has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bna.com/miami-beach-minimum-n73014482107/" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">decided to hear</a>&nbsp;the case.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As these legal battles between cities and states play out, special interests backed by corporate money have tried to influence who sits on the courts that define the scope of local authority. The<b> Florida Chamber of Commerce</b>, for example,&nbsp;<a href="https://judicialpolitics.org/app/uploads/JAS-NPJE-2013-14.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">has supported</a>&nbsp;attempts&nbsp;<a href="http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/court/page/12/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">to allow</a>&nbsp;the Republican governor to pack state courts.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it's not just Florida: In North Carolina, the state Chamber&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/2016/10/outside-groups-spend-over-2-million-so-far-pivotal-nc-supreme-court-race" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">has spent millions</a>&nbsp;of dollars in recent years to elect its preferred legislators and judges. And the Arkansas Supreme Court, whose recent elections have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2016/02/22/television-ads-alone-in-supreme-court-races-now-top-1-million" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">dominated</a>&nbsp;by national conservative groups that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/05/secret-money-courts-group-accused-libel-arkansas" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">don't disclose</a>&nbsp;their donors, last year&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/23/516702975/arkansas-supreme-court-strikes-down-local-anti-discrimination-law" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">struck down</a>&nbsp;a local civil rights law protecting LGBTQ people.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"State officials are trying to overrule the will of the voters, and ban local communities from doing the right thing and protecting their LGBT residents from discrimination,"&nbsp;<a href="https://www.acluarkansas.org/en/press-releases/aclu-represent-lgbt-residents-defending-fayettevilles-nondiscrimination-ordinance" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">said</a>&nbsp;Holly Dickson, legal director of the ACLU of Arkansas, which defended the ordinance.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 25px 0px 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(This is the second story in a series on the legacy of progressive Southern constitutions that were rewritten during Radical Reconstruction. To read the first, on the freedom to vote, click&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/09/honoring-reconstructions-legacy-freedom-vote" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">here</a>.)</font></span></p></div></div><div class="article-info border-top medium-padding" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-top: 60px; padding-bottom: 60px; border-top: 4px solid rgb(8, 69, 109); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h2 class="h4" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.1; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 12.5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tags</font></h2><ul class="field-tags list-inline" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; list-style: none; margin-left: -5px; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.75px; line-height: 1.75;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/civil-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CIVIL WAR</a></font></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/reconstruction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">RECONSTRUCTION</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/state-constitutions" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">STATE CONSTITUTIONS</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/voting-rights" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">VOTING RIGHTS</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/voter-suppression" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">VOTER SUPPRESSION</a></li><li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/white-supremacism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">WHITE SUPREMACISM</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/racism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">RACISM</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/jim-crow" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">JIM CROW</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/ku-klux-klan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">KU KLUX KLAN</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/lynching" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">LYNCHING</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/state-legislatures" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">STATE LEGISLATURES</a></li><li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/north-carolina" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">NORTH CAROLINA</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/local-control" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">LOCAL CONTROL</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/preemption" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">PREEMPTION</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/redeemers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">REDEEMERS</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/alabama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">ALABAMA</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/minimum-wage" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">MINIMUM WAGE</a></li><li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/nc-house-bill-2" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">NC HOUSE BILL 2</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/court-packing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">COURT PACKING</a></li>&nbsp;<li rel="dc:subject" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;"><a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/arkansas" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">ARKANSAS</a></li></ul></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Local Influence in Two Maps</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></font></font></div><div>Submitted by Calvin Sloan on May 25, 2016 - 9:29am</div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div>In March of 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy exposed how a GOP polling firm is working with state chambers of commerce to defeat workplace reforms like increasing the minimum wage and paid sick leave, despite their own polling that shows that large majorities of state chamber members and CEOs are supportive of such measures.</div><div>
</div><div>That webinar was hosted by the Council of State Chambers (COSC), a little-known trade association deeply embedded in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce infrastructure that provides ostensibly-autonomous state chambers of commerce with U.S. Chamber policy directives.</div><div>
</div><div>Research released by CMD in March further documented how the policy synergy provided by groups like COSC is not the exception to the rule; it is the rule. Countless local chambers and essentially every state chamber have been captured by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vast network of councils, government affairs conferences, training centers, executive associations, and membership clubs.</div><div>
</div><div>So how far does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s policy network extend?</div><div>
</div><div>Below is a map of the members of CCC 100, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s invite-only group of chamber executives that gather twice a year in lush resorts to attend U.S. Chamber-led policy trainings:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Since CMD’s source documents on CCC 100 range from 2011 to 2015, and contain only a handful of CCC 100 registration lists, this map is incomplete.</div><div>
</div><div>But from what information is available, it is clear that the U.S. Chamber has sought--and most of the time, has been able--to capture the policy direction of local chambers in every major city across the country.</div><div>
</div><div>Far too often in 2016 America, the local chamber is not representing local interests.</div><div>
</div><div>Donate to CMD!</div><div>Further, many local chambers are now highly partisan and transnationally interested. In soliciting CCC 100 "sponsorship opportunities," the U.S. Chamber advertises "three days of unlimited access to the nation's top chamber presidents and CEOs" to the lobbying departments of mega-corporations like Walmart, FedEx and American Express--corporate interests who prioritize shareholder profits, not community development.</div><div>
</div><div>The state chambers are in worse shape. The following map shows COSC state chamber membership:</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Apart from Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, every state in the country has a COSC-affiliate.</div><div>
</div><div>These institutions are provided with legal and political expertise from the U.S. Chamber on how to operate political PACs and lobby effectively, and are forces to be reckoned with in state capitols.</div><div>
</div><div>And U.S. Chamber "expertise" is by no means benign.</div><div>
</div><div>The latest COSC conference met in wintry January at the Marco Beach Ocean Resort, where state chamber executives attended a political discussion led by the Koch-founded Freedom Partners organization, and a policy training led by a PR firm "on how best to message a free market approach to climate issues."</div><div>
</div><div>The U.S. Chamber may be infamous for being the largest lobbyist in Washington D.C.--but it is evident that the organization’s influence extends far beyond the Beltway.</div><div>
</div><div>Read the key documents about CMD's investigation of the state Chambers here.</div><div>
</div><div>- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/05/13110/us-chamber-commerce-local-influence-two-maps#sthash.jBHhaMJD.dpuf</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13077/unmasking-chamber-commerce-networks</font></div><div><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)&nbsp;<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13072/chamber-commerce" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">unveiled</a>&nbsp;new documents showing the role that lobbyists for state chambers of commerce play in thwarting measures that American workers and, as it turns out, the overwhelming majority of CEOs support.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Who are these <b>state chamber lobbyists and what are the trade groups </b>they lead?</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 1971, when tobacco lawyer Lewis Powell penned his infamous&nbsp;<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/08/10984/lewis-powell-memo-corporate-blueprint-dominate-democracy" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">memo</a>&nbsp;to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he not only called upon the national Chamber to unify and strengthen corporate power in U.S. politics, he also identified other untapped potential for his corporate coup.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"Also," the soon-to-be Nixon nominee to the Supreme Court noted in his memo, "and this is of immeasurable merit — there are hundreds of local Chambers of Commerce which can play a vital supportive role."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Forty-five years later, many state and local chambers are doing just that: supporting a policy agenda set by the U.S. Chamber and its biggest bankrollers to the detriment of the deep economic concerns of local communities that sustain state businesses.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Powell understood that "strength lies in organization," and set out a broad list of targets, from the country's universities to its national media to the judicial branch, that the U.S. Chamber could infiltrate and organize.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The vast network of state and local chambers, however, could not organize themselves. And so the U.S. Chamber set out to develop an array of groups to unify them.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some of these entities are special projects of the U.S. Chamber; others are individually incorporated but interconnected to it.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> All of them are components of a network of special interests that has largely displaced the voices of ordinary people in policymaking in what is supposed to be a representative democracy of one person, one vote.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">These special interests routinely press elected officials to protect corporate profits from public policies sought by citizens that would make our economy and our environment healthier for all.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The groups are as follows.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Council of State Chambers</font></strong></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Since the 1971 Powell memo, but particularly since Tom Donohue became CEO in 1997, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has grown its revenue by prioritizing the agenda of a narrow subset of American businesses. Astute political observers are aware of this, and many of the Chamber's machinations have been&nbsp;<a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1007.verini.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">exposed</a>&nbsp;by intrepid journalists like James Verini.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Yet somehow the synergized role that&nbsp;<em>some</em>&nbsp;local chambers and&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;state chambers play in advancing the U.S. Chamber's special interest agenda has gone unnoticed.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Even amongst progressives, a myth endures that regional chambers are sovereign entities that advocate on behalf of their state's business interests. It's the U.S. Chamber that is corrupted or out of touch, not the state chambers, the thinking goes.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">No institution disproves this myth quicker than the Council of State Chambers (COSC).</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">COSC has 51 member organizations, of which 48 are state chambers of commerce. The other three are the <b>Council on State Taxation</b>, a trade association that exclusively represents mega-corporations that operate across state and international borders, the U.S. Chamber-affiliated ACCE (detailed below), and the U.S. Chamber.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">COSC is individually incorporated but deeply embedded in the Chamber's infrastructure. Rob Engstrom, the U.S. Chamber's national political director, sits on COSC's board of directors; the other 10 members of COSC's board are state chamber CEOs.&nbsp;<em>All 11 of them&nbsp;</em>are members of the U.S. Chamber's elite CCC 100 organization (detailed below).</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Like many of the U.S. Chamber's network-affiliated organizations, COSC's primary purpose is to hold meetings for lead state chamber lobbyists at elegant resorts – like the Marco Beach Ocean Resort – twice a year, which U.S. Chamber lobbyists routinely attend. COSC's small staff also sometimes hosts webinars to help the state chamber leaders in their legislative fights.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One of those webinars was provided to CMD/PRWatch and helps reveal how the state chambers are deployed to advance narrow interests at odds with the overwhelming support of business members on key policies.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As&nbsp;<a href="http://prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13075/top-gop-pollster-chamber-commerce-lobbyists-poll-shows-your-members-support" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">documented</a>&nbsp;by CMD, COSC hosted the online briefing for state chamber lobbyists to review polling the organization had commissioned from LuntzGlobal, a polling firm led by the <b>GOP operative Frank Luntz.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The polling showed that vast majorities of the state chambers' members support workplace reforms like increasing the minimum wage and mandating paid sick leave. After explaining these results in the COSC webinar, LuntzGlobal provided state chamber lobbyists with PR messaging strategies&nbsp;<em>to fight</em>&nbsp;these reforms, instead of logically transitioning to how the state chambers, as purportedly membership-driven organizations, could best advocate for them.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">COSC's actions show how they and the state chambers are subservient to the transnational corporate interests that animate and underwrite the U.S. Chamber.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A review of COSC conference materials further proves this point.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In wintry January, COSC met at the Marco Beach Ocean Resort in sunny Florida for a three-day gathering.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition to hearing directly from Frank Luntz about elements of the workplace reform poll that was later provided to CMD, state chamber executives participated in a communications strategy session on how to defeat minimum wage increase proposals.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Also on the agenda was a 2016 political discussion led by the Koch-founded Freedom Partners organization, and a session led by a PR firm "on how best to message a free market approach to climate issues," which is code for thwarting government efforts to promote <b>alternative energy</b></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> – the kind of efforts that the billionaire Koch brothers who lead Koch Industries, one of the largest privately held energy conglomerates in the country, have consistently opposed.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Past COSC conferences have included trainings led by representatives from the&nbsp;<b><a href="http://www.alecexposed.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">American Legislative Exchange Council</a>, mega-corporations like Walmart, </b>and of course the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">One session at an earlier meeting was titled, "PAC Fundraising Strategies to Raise BIG $$$." Another panel from that same meeting was called, "Changing the Game with Independent Expenditures," the kind of election spending that is not supposed to be coordinated with electoral candidates.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">COSC's conferences and webinars, coupled with the U.S. Chamber's avenues of influence, appear to have a substantive impact on state chambers' lobbying and policy positions.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Take for example the issue of workplace reforms.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">LuntzPolling showed that 80% of the state chambers' own business members support minimum wage increases, while 73% support paid sick time. Yet over the over the last three years, 48 state chambers have publicly opposed minimum wage increases. And in the last 5 years, 75% of the country's state chambers have opposed paid sick leave policies.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Both measures are explicitly opposed in the U.S. Chamber's 2016 policy platform.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. Chamber's Regional Government Affairs Conferences</font></strong></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Since at least 2004, the U.S. Chamber has been inviting state and local chamber staff twice a year to travel to posh resorts for "regional government affairs conferences." </font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like ALEC's conference&nbsp;<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/05/11443/cmd-special-report-alecs-scholarship-scheme-helps-corporations-fund-legislator-tr" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">model</a>, the Chamber underwrites conference attendees' travel expenses with "scholarship" money.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the conferences, U.S. Chamber lobbyists, outside political consultants, professional pollsters and the CEOs of transnational corporations help indoctrinate state and local chamber staff on how best to follow the U.S. Chamber's special interest agenda.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The conferences cover a wide range of lobbying agenda items.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On energy, attendees are regularly briefed by <b>Karen Harbert, the president of the U.S. Chamber's "Institute for 21st Century Energy." </b>Harbert and the "Institute" she presides over have long advocated for d</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">eregulating fracking, expanding offshore oil drilling in U.S. coastal waters, rejecting the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, and vastly increasing coal and nuclear energy production.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>On international trade issues, </b>attendees hear from the likes of Christopher Wenk, the "Director of International Policy" at the U.S. Chamber, on why local and state chambers should lobby lawmakers to pass "free trade" agreements like the TPP and TTIP, despite the job-killing consequences of similar trade deals that the Chamber has backed that have decimated U.S. manufacturing jobs.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On labor issues, <b>Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber's "Workforce Freedom Initiative"</b> regularly leads panel discussions. Spencer formerly worked for David Koch's Citizens for a Sound Economy operation (the predecessor of Kochs' Americans for Prosperity and also the FreedomWorks entities) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Predictably, his briefings are rabidly anti-union/anti-worker rights.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">And so on.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But it's not all policy talk at these "government affairs" retreats.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Conferences end with a "political workshop" highlighting the U.S. Chamber's latest approaches to effective electioneering, because, in one conference agenda's description, "Getting actively engaged in politics is the new frontier for chambers for a simple reason:&nbsp;<em>it's easier to elect</em>&nbsp;officials who understand your concerns&nbsp;<em>than to convince</em>&nbsp;officials who fundamentally disagree with you" (emphasis added).</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Conference agendas also show that the U.S. Chamber is keen on making sure state and local chamber lobbyists and staff have time to booze and schmooze. Every conference features two nights of alcohol-fueled entertainment.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Last October in Nashville, conference attendees were taken by bus to the Country Music Hall of Fame to enjoy "an intimate show with Nashville's finest songwriters."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At a conference for state and local chamber lobbyists earlier in 2015 in Las Vegas, attendees were invited to an open-bar reception at RHUMBAR, a location, the conference agenda specified, where the "plush outdoor patio is reminiscent of a tropical retreat, offering a picturesque location for attendees to mingle, sip cocktails, and take in the great views of the Las Vegas strip."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The following night, Vegas attendees were encouraged to "unwind at Ghostbar," another venue "with breathtaking skyline panoramas."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The term wined-and-dined is typically used to describe corporate interests' dealings with public officials. But state and local chambers do represent – or claim to represent – their communities in democratic forums and governing bodies.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Through the U.S. Chamber's luxurious conferences, the lobbyists and staff of state and local chambers are wined, dined, and indoctrinated with special-interest talking points.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. Chamber's "Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100"</font></strong></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100 (CCC100) is an invite-only group of state and local chamber executives that gathers with U.S. Chamber lobbyists twice a year at opulent hotels and resorts across the country to help advance chamber lobbying priorities in states and cities for the coming six months.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Chamber states that CCC100 "advises the U.S. Chamber on programs and services for chambers and provides feedback on policy-related issues." However CCC100 documents show the opposite: the Chamber is very much in charge of CCC100's policy agenda.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On March 1-3, 2016, CCC100 gathered for its first meeting of the year at the luxurious Ritz Carlton in Orlando, Florida. The three-day conference kicked off with a golf tournament on the Ritz's<b> PGA tour course. Cocktail receptions, dinners, electronic skeet shooting, and a Super Tuesday viewing party followed</b>. More importantly, so did U.S. Chamber-dominated policy discussions.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The conference featured an hour-long speech from U.S. Chamber CEO Tom Donohue; a policy update from the Chamber's most senior government and political affairs executive; a luncheon featuring<b> Michael L. Ducker, the Chamber's chairman of the board and the CEO of FedEx Freight; </b>an economic update from the Chamber's chief economist; and a networking session co-hosted by the Chamber's managing director.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;" /><div id="block-inject-1" class="block-inject block-inject-1" style="line-height: 24px;"><div id="block-block-40" class="block block-block first odd" style="margin-bottom: 1.5em;"><div class="adv">
</div></div></div><div class="clearfix" style="line-height: 24px;"><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">So much for CCC100 "advising" the U.S. Chamber on public policy.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CCC100 conferences have lasting impacts on state and local chamber executives. As the former CEO of the Palm Desert Area Chamber of Commerce Barbara DeBoom stated, "My participation on the CCC100 allows our chamber to stay ahead of the herd on economic updates, public policy issues, and leadership skills."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DeBoom went on to proclaim that CCC100 also serves as an excellent resource for her community, although the U.S. Chamber is largely funded by some of the largest global corporations in the world, whose interests are generally at odds with local communities.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lastly, the U.S. Chamber's claim that CCC100 is merely a gathering of chamber executives is unfounded. There is another group that regularly attends CCC100 meetings: other corporate lobbyists.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"This is a tremendous opportunity for you and your organization to access influential executives," the Chamber wrote in a sponsorship brochure for potential CCC100 corporate sponsors. In the brochure, the most prominently listed sponsorship perk was "three days of unlimited access to the nation's top chamber presidents and CEOs."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Lobbyists lobbying other lobbyists.</b> There ought to be a term for the exponential explosion of corporate lobbyists hired ultimately to influence officials elected to represent actual citizens—human beings in a democracy, not global corporations.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. Chamber's Institute for Organization Management</font></strong></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The "Institute for Organization Management" (IOM) is a professional development program of the U.S. Chamber designed to "enhance individual performance, elevate professional standards, and recognize association, chamber of commerce, and other nonprofit professionals who demonstrate the knowledge essential to the practice of nonprofit management."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>In this sense, IOM serves as a leadership pipeline for the chamber network.</b> The four-installment program, which the Chamber describes in academic terms, is offered to chamber professionals at five so-called "institutes" across the country.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Like the Chamber's regional government affairs conferences, "scholarships" are provided to IOM participants, who are instructed by a "faculty" of political consultants, communication strategists, lobbyists, lawyers, and seasoned chamber professionals (many of whom are former graduates of IOM).</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Notably, a handful of the "courses" offered at IOM are about money and influence: "<em>E250 PACs and Political Endorsements</em>," "<em>E211 Sponsorship Solicitation</em>," "<em>E362 Policy Development and Implementation</em>," and "<em>C270 Effective Government Affairs Programs</em>."</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The </font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Association of Chambers of Commerce Executives</font></strong></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Association of Chambers of Commerce Executives (ACCE) works "to support and develop chamber professionals to lead businesses and their communities." (This </font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">ACCE is distinct from the new project spawned by ALEC that shares that acronym: the American City County Exchange.)</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ACCE hosts a nonpartisan policy wiki web service and convenes an annual meeting for hundreds of chamber professionals.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But with ACCE, as with almost all things Chamber, the devil's in the details.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In 2001, ACCE brought Mick Fleming on as President, a position he still holds today. In an&nbsp;<a href="http://www.executiveleadersradio.com/fleming-mick-3567.aspx" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">interview</a>&nbsp;with Executive Leaders Radio, Fleming explained that he got the job because he "saw right away that [ACCE] had to take a bigger view than just run a club for businesspeople."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Particularly, in Fleming's "bigger view," ACCE and the chambers they worked with needed to change their revenue models. Fleming, who is a CCC100 member, explained his thought process at the time.</font></p><blockquote style="margin: 10px 0px; font-style: italic; padding: 20px 40px; line-height: 24px; background-image: url(" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" sites="sites" all="all" themes="themes" prw="prw" images="images" blue-quote-mark.png="blue-quote-mark.png" px="px" no-repeat="no-repeat" scroll="scroll" rgb="rgb"><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"...the people who give Chambers the most money care the least about what's in their membership kit. They don't care about how many discounts they get or where the mixer is nearly as much — this is the big investors — they care much more whether or not this chamber is going to make a difference in the community. Is it going to make prosperity, is it going to make a chance for prosperity in their community?"</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Under Fleming's tenure, ACCE has advocated for local chambers to change their funding models so the "big investors" can "make a difference in the community." In other words, ACCE is helping local chambers adopt Tom Donohue's approach to chamber advocacy, a style that is colloquially referred inside the U.S. Chamber as the "views for dues" approach.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">During the last ACCE annual meeting in 2015, there were no less than ten sessions on chamber fundraising. Many of these sessions were focused on a revenue policy ACCE has put at the forefront of its advocacy, tier-based funding models.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The mainstay of chamber revenue funding had for years been "fair-share" models. Under these agreements, chambers collect dues at modestly scaled rates adjusted to company size, and all due-paying members receive the same benefits of membership. In the fair-share model, chamber membership is viewed as a collective investment in community prosperity.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Tier-based models are structured from a different viewpoint of how chambers should function, and what chamber membership constitutes.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In tier-based funding</b>, members are "investors" looking for a return on their "investment" into the chamber. As ACCE explains in a policy paper on the subject, under tier-models, "benefits increase as the investment level increases… upper tier benefits usually include all the benefits of the lower tiers plus such things as&nbsp;<em>invitations to select events like breakfast with the mayor or advocacy trips, customized research reports and free consulting services</em>" (emphasis added). To be clear, paying the state and local chambers more gets business more access to public officials, like "breakfast with the mayor."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the view of the revenues consultant Kyle Sexton, tier-funding for chambers of commerce helps "to attract<em>&nbsp;buyers&nbsp;</em>to a high level of&nbsp;<em>investment</em>" because tier-funding provides a "...specific reason for&nbsp;<em>buying</em>" (emphasis added).</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Sexton has served on ACCE's board of directors, is a frequent presenter for ACCE and for regional chamber executive organizations, and, not coincidentally, is a "faculty member" of the U.S. Chamber's Institute for Organization Management.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Local and State Associations of Chamber of Commerce Executives</font></strong></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition to ACCE, which is a national organization, there are at least 20 state-based associations of chamber of commerce executives throughout the country that spend roughly $2.2 million annually convening regional chamber executives and synergizing chamber messaging.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Texas Chamber of Commerce Executives (TCCE)</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> is an example for how these state-based associations work, and how connected they are to the larger U.S. Chamber framework.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">TCCE hosts a conference every year for its 224 local chamber members, doling out "scholarship" money when needed. Last year, the conference included a legislative session led by Chris Wallace, the President of the Texas Association of Business (Texas' state chamber) and a "faculty" member of the Institute for Organization Management. The conference also included a keynote speech from ACCE president Mick Fleming.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Two years prior, TCCE held a government affairs conference sponsored directly by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">TCCE is not alone. The last conference of the Western Association of Chamber Executives, an organization led by Dave Kilby, a CCC100 member and the CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce, featured a keynote speech from Mick Fleming.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Florida Chamber of Commerce Executives will hear from the Institute of Organization Management's "faculty" member and revenues consultant Kyle Sexton at their bi-annual conference in May. They won't be hearing from Mick Fleming, but not because Fleming's not a welcomed presenter; he spoke at their meeting last fall.</font></p><h2 style="line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A Network of Immeasurable Merit for Whom?</font></strong></h2><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the&nbsp;<em>Citizens United</em>-era, corporate interests have access to a wide array of legal channels and entities that lend anonymity or even positive branding to their political advocacy. The change in the state chambers from locally&nbsp;focused to more nationally&nbsp;deployed falls into the latter of these two categories.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As the CCC100 member, IOM graduate, and CEO of the Glenwood Springs Chamber Resort Association Marianne Virgili has said, regarding corporations' relationships with the chambers, "We're helping them out. We're a centuries-old brand."</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">America's first chamber, the New York Chamber of Commerce, was founded in 1768 near the dawn of the American Revolution, as corporations were just beginning to become more common.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the years that followed, as the nation's economy industrialized and modernized, chambers proliferated and became staples of municipalities and the states.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Some local chambers have a long history of helping to improve economic opportunity in their communities. And even though the U.S. Chamber has poured millions of dollars into synergizing chamber membership, many of the local chambers still work to those ends.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But for a growing number of local chambers and for all state chambers, the interests of community have been supplanted by the interests of the transnational corporations that drive U.S. Chamber policy.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That's part and parcel of the vision set forth by the corporate lawyer who sought to thwart federal, state, and local regulation of cancer-causing cigarettes, Lewis Powell—who used his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court to plant the seeds for the destruction of campaign finance regulations that limit the influence of corporations and CEOs, who grafted new-found corporate and money rights onto the Constitution.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The results of the Powell legacy are ruinous, and far greater than realized.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">---</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lisa Graves contributed to this article.</font></em></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">For more info on this story see the following resources:&nbsp;</font></em></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/cmd_prwatch_markup_of_01-05-16_state_chambers_topline_poll.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Here</a>&nbsp;is the poll, marked up by CMD.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=4CtmWcvX81E" style="text-decoration: none;">Here&nbsp;</a>is a short video, on the webinar by CMD.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/01-10-2016_cmd_mark_up_of_cosc_presentation.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Here</a>&nbsp;is a copy of the slideshow, marked up by CMD.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/03-31-16_luntz_poll_transcript_re_business_support_for_increasing_minimum_wage_and_other_policies.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;">Here</a>&nbsp;is a transcript of the webinar, highlighted by CMD.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoafI3hfzmg" style="text-decoration: none;">Here</a>&nbsp;is the link to the longer version of the webinar.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/03-31-2016_cmd_on_chambers_whos_who_re_webinar.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Here&nbsp;</a>is some information about who spoke during the webinar.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13075/top-gop-pollster-chamber-commerce-lobbyists-poll-shows-your-members-support" style="text-decoration: none;">Here</a>&nbsp;is CMD's press release summarizing key information about the materials.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13074/luntz-poll-american-ceos-shows-deep-support-progressive-policies" style="text-decoration: none;">Here</a>&nbsp;is some analysis of the polling results by CMD.</font></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; line-height: 24px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://http//www.npr.org/podcasts/381444908/fresh-air" style="text-decoration: none;">Here</a>&nbsp;is an interview about the materials and the efforts to preempt local efforts to increase the minumum wage, paid sick, family leave, predictive scheduling and other popular measures.&nbsp;</font></p><span style="line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">- See more at: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13077/unmasking-chamber-commerce-networks#sthash.Ck2iqiOd.dpuf</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">2016</font></div><div><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><em>In Closed-Door Webinar, Luntz&nbsp;</em></strong><strong><em>Pollsters Instruct Chamber Lobbyists How to Thwart Local Biz Owners' "Empathy" for Workers to&nbsp;</em></strong><strong><em>Advance National Anti-Worker Agenda</em></strong></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Madison, WI--Video footage of a closed-door webinar provided to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveals top GOP pollsters instructing Chamber of Commerce lobbyists to ignore internal survey data showing that Chamber members across the country overwhelmingly support progressive workplace policies including raising the minimum wage, providing paid sick days, and increasing paid family leave. (These and other materials are available&nbsp;<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/03/13072/chamber-commerce" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">here</a>.)</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the video, pollsters with LuntzGlobal, the survey research firm of noted GOP pollster Frank Luntz, coach lobbyists from state and local Chambers on how to thwart the "empathy" that Chamber members feel for their employees in order to advance an anti-worker agenda aligned with the Koch Brothers and other corporate interests.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"This webinar reveals just how deeply corporate interests and their lobbyists are influencing the priorities of state Chambers of Commerce, even when that agenda contradicts the opinions of their local business members,"&nbsp;<strong>said Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy,&nbsp;</strong><strong>a national watchdog organization that monitors the hidden influence of corporate interests in politics</strong>. "Rather than listening to its members and crafting a policy agenda that reflects their priorities, Chamber lobbyists pick their policy positions behind closed doors and then figure out how to convince their members to fall in line."</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"It's a warped, undemocratic process, and the Chambers should be held accountable for their claims to the public, press, and elected officials that businesses oppose raising the minimum wage, paid sick leave, increased family and medical leave and other common sense policies, when in fact substantial majorities of business executives actually support these public policies," she added.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">During the hour-long webinar, which was hosted by the Council of State Chambers in February 2016, LuntzGlobal consultants present the results of an internal survey of 1,000 C-suite executives who are either current or prospective Chamber members. The poll finds that – contrary to the Chamber's lobbying agenda – 80 percent of current or prospective Chamber members support raising the minimum wage, 73 percent support paid sick days, 78 percent support predictive scheduling policies, 72 percent support increased maternity leave time, and 82 percent support increased paternity leave time, among other policies.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the webinar, a LuntzGlobal consultant asks about the poll findings: "So what do these results all have in common? Well quite frankly, they're all empathetic." In response, the consultants advise Council of State Chamber lobbyists on messaging and strategies to help their members get over their empathy and to undermine and change their members' views: "So what we'll try to do is actually give you a few helpful hints on how to actually combat these [workplace reform efforts and their popularity among business leaders] in your states…"</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"With their internal polls showing that business owners and executives support raising the minimum wage by an overwhelming 80-to-8 percent, it's unconscionable that the U.S. Chamber and state chambers continue to fight the wage increases that America's workers and our economy need,"&nbsp;<strong>said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project</strong>.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In state and cities where these policies have been debated, the local Chamber is almost always in the frontlines of the local opposition, working with other local affiliates of the National Restaurant Association, the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and other corporate trade groups to slow or stop the advances of these policies.</p><div class="clearfix" style="color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"Paid sick days, paid family and medical leave, fair scheduling and a higher minimum wage are critically important to the health and well-being of workers, their families&nbsp;<em>and</em>&nbsp;the businesses that employ them,"&nbsp;<strong>said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, which has pioneered this country's leave policies</strong>. "We have known for years what this research confirms: that an overwhelming share of business leaders support paid sick days, paid leave and other family friendly policies. It's long past time for the knee-jerk opposition, and baseless sky-is-falling claims, from organized business interests to end. We should be working together to adopt the advances that benefit everyone, not having pitched battles every time we try to advance a paid sick days or paid leave law or raise the minimum wage."</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>Carrie Gleason, Director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, added</strong>: "For years we have known companies support scheduling policies that let working families thrive because they're good for everyone -- workers, business and the economy. It's clear that the Chamber acts against the interests of its own members when it lobbies against policies their members clearly support, as shown by the 70% backing for predictive scheduling. That's why policymakers this year have acted swiftly to guarantee new baseline standards for today's workweek, and we hope this news encourages even more employers to come out in support of hours that work for all."</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Council on State Chambers,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> which is staffed by the lobbying firm MultiState Associates, Inc., has doubled-down on political engagement in cities and states across the country</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">: In 2012, COSC established a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.statechamberconnect.org/policy-center" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">"State Chamber Policy Center"</a>&nbsp;to disseminate reports on issues and legislative proposals and to manage a network of state Chamber government affairs staff, policy experts, and communications staff.</span></p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"I'm not surprised that Luntz's poll showed strong business support for increasing the minimum wage,"&nbsp;<strong>said</strong>&nbsp;<strong>Jon Cooper, President and Co-Owner, Spectronics Corporation in Westbury, NY</strong>. "Raising the minimum wage will boost the economy and it encourages better business practices. Companies that invest in their workforce have more motivated, more productive employees who make fewer mistakes that cost time and money. When the minimum wage is so low that even full-time workers need public assistance to get by, it weakens consumer demand and hurts our economy."</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. Chamber has lobbied on Capitol Hill and in statehouses across the country to block federal, state and local minimum wage increases, and has been active in states like&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-15/help-workers-risk-losing-money-for-cops" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">Arizona</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/us/alabama-moves-to-halt-pay-law-in-birmingham.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">Alabama</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.pressherald.com/2015/10/07/opposition-to-15-minimum-wage-effort-launch-campaign/" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">Maine</a>, Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan and&nbsp;<a href="https://lobbying.wi.gov/What/BillInformation/2011REG/Information/8004?tab=Principals" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">Wisconsin</a>&nbsp;to preempt local minimum wage ordinances. It has lobbied against paid sick days in many states, including California,&nbsp;<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20110313230112/http:/cbia.com/govaff/pdf/2011/test/pslletters.pdf" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">Connecticut</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_25655533/business-groups-opposed-paid-family-leave-bill-colorado" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">Colorado (Denver)</a>&nbsp;,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/paid-sick-days-have-momentum-opposition-might-have-more/" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">Florida</a>, Maryland,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.elec.state.nj.us/pdffiles/press_releases/pr_2015/pr_06022015.pdf" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">New Jersey</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/702456/abqnewsseeker/bill-would-preempt-local-labor-laws-in-nm.html" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">New Mexico</a>.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The U.S. Chamber has close ties to some of the largest multinational corporations in the world, including Koch Industries, whose leaders, Charles and David Koch, have funded an array of groups that actively oppose policies like increasing the minimum wage. The Koch brothers' group Freedom Partners has&nbsp;<a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/revealed-the-secret-koch-group-that-gave-conservatives-236-million-in-2012" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">donated millions</a>&nbsp;to the Chamber of Commerce in recent years. In January, the Council of State Chambers held a session for state lobbyists on "Policy and Politics in 2016," where Marc Short, then-President of Freedom Partners, was a designated speaker.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The LuntzGlobal survey reflects a national sample of business owners and executives who are registered voters and who are members of the local, state, or U.S. Chamber of Commerce or match the profile of executives that the chambers would want to attract. In all, 73% were CEOs or owners; more than half (59%) had revenues of between $50 million and $500 million; 39% had fewer than 100 employees while another 41% had 100-499 employees. The results included 250 responses per region (East, Midwest, South, West), with results weighted among all states in each region.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Center for Media and Democracy has previously released key whistleblower documents exposing the dark lobbying efforts of groups including the<a href="http://www.alecexposed.org/" target="blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">&nbsp;America Legislative Exchange Council</a>&nbsp;(ALEC) and other corporate interests. CMD publishes PRWatch.org, ALECexposed.org, SourceWatch.org and other sites.</p><p style="margin: 1.5em 0px; color: rgb(66, 66, 66); font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To arrange an interview, contact: Jack Temple,&nbsp;<a href="mailto:jack.temple@berlinrosen.com" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(51, 119, 187); text-decoration: none;">jack.temple@berlinrosen.com</a>, (646) 200-5280</p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div></div></div>