Draft
Model Policies Annual Meeting 2014
In August 2014, ALEC members met in Dallas to discuss and debate new model policies. Below is a full list of newly adopted or amended policies from the 2014 Annual Meeting.
All model policies are subject to review and reaffirmation every five years.
Communications and Technology Task Force
Resolution Opposing the Expansion of the Federal Trade Commission’s Rulemaking Authority
Telecommunications Deregulation Policy Statement
Education Task Force
Affordable Baccalaureate Degree Act
Summary: To aid students and their parents in their efforts to at pursuing a college degree, the Affordable Baccalaureate Degree Act would require all public four-year universities to offer bachelor’s degrees costing no more than $10,000, total, for four years of tuition, fees, and books. The Act would require that ten percent of all public, four-year university degrees awarded reach this price-point within four years of passage of this act.
Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force
Resolution Concerning EPA’s Proposed Guidelines for Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants
Summary: This resolution finds that the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed regulations for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fueled baseload generating units contradicts the position and recommendations of ALEC and many individual legislatures and other state policymakers who made recommendations to EPA to limit its focus to affected units. The EPA’s proposed guidelines to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants are vastly different from any previous EPA emission reduction program. Instead of setting an emission limit for electricity generating units, the rule sets individual state emission rate goals and suggests building blocks for achieving those goals, which makes the proposed guidelines incredibly complex and difficult to evaluate since the impact will vary state by state.
As proposed, the guidelines include flawed assumptions and requirements that result in overly aggressive emission rate reductions in many states that will raise electricity costs for customers. In their current form, these guidelines could force premature retirement of additional efficient, low-cost coal-fueled generation, lead to the potential loss of billions of dollars in investments made over the last decade to make coal plants cleaner, and require construction of higher-cost replacement generation. The guidelines also usurp energy policy and regulatory roles that have traditionally been held by the states, without any clear Congressional authorization.
The resolution promotes collaboration among state policymakers to assess many issues and comment upon EPA’s proposal and encourages them to engage EPA after the regulation is finalized in 2015.
Resolution In Support of Expanded Liquefied Natural Gas Exports
Summary: The United States is currently experiencing a potentially transformative energy boom, including in natural gas. Unfortunately, our cumbersome and outdated natural gas export regulatory system prevents us from capitalizing on this energy revolution by exporting natural gas in its liquefied form (LNG) freely to non-FTA partners to promote economic growth. Our current export control regime also keeps us from using this resource strategically to support our partners around the world. Recent events in Ukraine bring the strategic aspects of this situation into sharp relief. This draft resolution serves as a specific addendum to Resolution for Reform of Counterproductive Export Control Policies, model policy considered in the International Relations Task Force and approved by the ALEC Board in 2013. This earlier model policy was crafted to address all manner of misguided export control policies, including but not limited to those governing energy.
Resolution Regarding Clean Water Act Regulations of EPA’s Definition of “Waters of the U.S.”
Weights and Measures and Standards for Dispensing CNG and LNG Motor Fuels
Health and Human Services Task Force
Summary: Requires health plans offered through a state-based health exchange to provide specific information in order for consumers to draw meaningful comparisons between plans.
Federal and State Funded Health Care Financing Programs Overview Committee Act
Summary: Establishes the Federal and State Funded Health Care Financing Programs Overview Committee, charged with reviewing state health agencies and ensuring they adequately fulfill statutory requirements.
Requiring Legislative Approval for Medicaid Expansion Act
Summary: Prohibits the expansion of Medicaid eligibility through an increase in the income threshold without prior legislative approval.
International Relations Task Force
Resolution in Support of Expanded Liquefied Natural Gas Exports
Summary: The United States is currently experiencing a potentially transformative energy boom, including in natural gas. Unfortunately, our cumbersome and outdated natural gas export regulatory system prevents us from capitalizing on this energy revolution by exporting natural gas in its liquefied form (LNG) freely to non-FTA partners to promote economic growth. Our current export control regime also keeps us from using this resource strategically to support our partners around the world. Recent events in Ukraine bring the strategic aspects of this situation into sharp relief. This draft resolution serves as a specific addendum to Resolution for Reform of Counterproductive Export Control Policies, model policy considered in the International Relations Task Force and approved by the ALEC Board in 2013. This earlier model policy was crafted to address all manner of misguided export control policies, including but not limited to those governing energy.
Resolution on Trade Promotion Authority
Summary: This resolution supports the extension of trade promotion authority (TPA) to the President of the United States, and something a version of which every US President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has had, with the latest iteration lapsing in 2007. TPA facilitates the expansion of markets and the negotiation of free trade agreements which have been shown to increase America’s export market and to be an important tool for the US President to have.
Resolution to Highlight Challenges and Opportunities in the US-India Trade Relationship
Summary: The United States and India are the world’s two largest democracies and are currently experiencing their largest bilateral trade and investment flows ever recorded, with total goods and services traded in 2011 recorded at $100 billion. In recent years, however, India has implemented a range of anti-competitive economic policies that demonstrate an alarming disregard for accepted international intellectual property rights. This is a troubling development for India and its trading partners. The recent inauguration of a new national government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi offers an important opportunity to re-establish a positive direction in India in this critical policy area. This resolution outlines some of India’s existing mercantilist practices underscoring their inconsistency with free market principles and international intellectual property norms. We will also highlight how India’s current protectionist trends threaten to stifle its own economy. Drawing on U.S. experience with the power of intellectual property to catalyze innovation, best practices are identified that may inform India’s own policy conversations.
Summary: The United States and Taiwan enjoy a robust and longstanding economic partnership. We are Taiwan’s third largest trading partner, and Taiwan is America’s 12th. However, codifying the trade relationship with the negotiation of a formal free trade agreement would enhance our strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region; encourage greater innovation and manufacturing efficiencies by stimulating joint technological development and new cooperative ventures; and increase exports of US energy to Taiwan given our current energy export policies
State Constitutional “Water is Life Amendment”
Summary: This draft model policy would amend an individual state constitution to reaffirm that the US Constitution was intended to reserve exclusive jurisdiction over non-navigable intrastate waterways to the state in which the waterway is located.
Justice Performance Project Task Force
Accuracy in Criminal Records Act
Summary: This Act would require state and local agencies that sell criminal background records to certify their accuracy in writing when they sell these records and ensure all entities that have purchased such records are promptly updated whenever updated or corrected information becomes available.
Resolution in Support of Post-Release Supervision of Offenders
Summary: This resolution supports efforts to require appropriate inmates to serve the final portion of their sentences on post-release supervision and tailoring this supervision to the offender’s risk and needs level. Inmates released without supervision have higher recidivism rates, leading to more crime, more victims, more incarceration, and more costs for taxpayers. This resolution supports moving away from the practice of discharging inmates without supervision and tailoring supervision conditions to the risks and needs of the offender.
Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force
Resolution in Opposition to Mandatory Unitary Combined Reporting
Summary: Many states have adopted, or are considering adopting, mandatory unitary combined reporting (“MUCR”) into their corporate tax regimes. MUCR is an aggressive reporting method used to determine state taxable income for a group of affiliated corporations. At its most basic level, MUCR treats a group of affiliated corporations engaged in a “unitary business” as a single taxpayer notwithstanding traditional notions of corporate separateness. This treatment results in taxing income earned outside the state. The main rationale for adopting MUCR is closing perceived corporate tax “loopholes.” However, instead of closing so-called loopholes, MUCR permits a state to tax income earned outside of its boundaries. Further, MUCR creates additional administrative burdens for reporting corporations and state tax administrators, thereby creating an economic drag on the state economy and an unneeded increase in state government bureaucracy.
The Public School Financial Transparency Act
Summary: The Public School Financial Transparency Act would require each local education provider in the state to create and maintain a searchable expenditure and revenue Web site database that includes detailed data of revenues and expenditures. It also would require each local education provider to maintain the data in a format that is easily accessible, searchable, and downloadable.
Retirement System Board of Trustees and Employees Prudent Investor Act
Summary: This policy promotes security, stability, and accountability in state retirement systems. A trustee or director of a state retirement system must comply with a series of prudent investor guidelines. These guidelines include risk and return objectives, diversification, loyalty, investment costs, compliance, and delegation of management functions.