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One of many funny things about this breathless “exposé” of model legislation is that it seems to think it’s discovered something new, rather than something old that’s now apparent to outside observers, because it’s being done at scale. usatoday.com/in-depth/news/…
Legislation is drafted by outside groups (or lawyers at government agencies) of every ideological description, all the time—not just “model bills” recycled from state to state. Law is complicated, and the folks with highly specific domain expertise are often external.
New surveillance bill under consideration? Probably drafted by a lawyer at DOJ. Legislation to protect civil liberties? Good odds the first draft was worked up by an ACLU attorney. This isn’t new; there’s a whole polisci literature on “lobbying as a legislative subsidy.”
The point isn’t “so the process has always been corrupt!” It’s that all legislation, including the bills you approve of, gets written this way, and that’s... sort of fine—as long as the legislative offices have enough in-house expertise to do their own analysis and revisions.
If you don’t like some of the bills that are being passed, your problem should be that you have legislators willing to do bad things. If a rep is willing to sponsor the Puppy Strangulation Act, the issue isn’t really whether their staff typed it up from scratch.
Last thing: there are a few common ways outside advocacy groups directly influence legislative language. (1) Openly circulating model text. (2) Drafting bespoke text for a particular office, rarely advertised. (3) Consulting with the legislative staff doing the drafting.
Model bills are both the most transparent and the least costly of those options. Every advocacy group can afford to hire some smart people to draft model text; consulting directly with staff in 50 state legislatures is what takes a seriously well-funded operation.
