The list of major corporations severing ties with right-wing public policy group American Legislative Exchange Council continues to grow with Thursday’s announcement that General Motors and Walgreen Co. have dropped their memberships, according to reports.
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“We routinely evaluate our support for a variety of organizations,” said Greg Martin, a GM spokesman, according to Bloomberg. “As such, we have decided to discontinue our support and funding of ALEC.”
“We recently informed ALEC that, effective immediately, Walgreen Co. will not be renewing its membership in their organization,” said James Graham, a spokesman for the drug store chain.
In recent weeks, Best Buy and CVS Caremark also cut ties with ALEC. A CVS spokeswoman said on July 10 that the company had closely been following issues surrounding ALEC and “have heard from numerous stakeholders expressing their views.”
“As a result, after careful consideration of the available information, CVS Caremark has discontinued its membership in ALEC,” a spokeswoman told Bloomberg Businessweek.
News of GM’s and Walgreen’s departures comes as ALEC holds its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, where on Wednesday a group of activist organizations including Alliance for a Better Utah, Center for Media and Democracy, Common Cause and People for the American Way released a 45-page report detailing “the recent history of ALEC’s corruptive influence in the Utah legislature.”
“The ALEC agenda, focused on privatization, often puts corporate profit ahead of the public interest and sees states’ general funds as an economic resource to enrich corporate bottom lines,” the report reads. “… It is a corporate sponsored agenda that does not serve the public interest or the taxpayers.”
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