How CEOs Use a ‘Neutral’ Legislature Group to Indoctrinate State Lawmakers

Executives from Amazon, Walmart, and scores of other anti-worker, anti-regulation corporations are paying millions to influence elected officials through the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), researchers and former lawmakers who have attended the meetings told the Prospect. In exchange for donating to the NCSL Foundation, the NCSL allows executives to set conference agendas and put their preferred speakers on panel discussions about policymaking, they said.

The arrangement is giving corporate interests significant power to shape how lawmakers think about issues, especially those in which they have little or no expertise, these critics say. The benefits go well beyond those that the NCSL Foundation says on its website come with the annual sponsorship fees at various price levels, such as invitations to meetings.

“Basically, NCSL just has this system where corporations pay to help create the agendas for learning sessions for state legislators,” said one former attendee, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “This is like a major place where state legislatures go to learn the basics of their job, and here you have these very moneyed interests that control the agenda.”

Former Iowa state Sen. Joe Bolkcom, a Democrat who served 24 years before retiring in 2023, said that was his experience. He said NCSL is generally seen as a mainstream bipartisan group that provides policy expertise and education to state legislators. For years, however, corporations have seen NCSL as a way to get access to policymakers and further their own aims, he said in an interview.

“They invest in NCSL when they’ve got hot issues: renewable energy, nuclear power, you name it. Big corporations have interests and they see the states as a place where they can have impacts.”

The more that executives pay, the more access they get, critics of the group said. But even the lowest level of donation is enough to give corporate executives a way to impose their views on lawmakers, a second former attendee told the Prospect on condition of anonymity, in some cases through industry lobbyists.

A case in point is the Council on State Taxation (COST), the state tax policy lobbying arm of Fortune 1000 companies, which is listed on the foundation page among the “Silver Sponsors.” That is the lowest level of sponsorship and requires a yearly minimum of $10,000. Agendas for NCSL events going back 12 years show COST officials on numerous panels, including multiple instances where two COST officials appeared on the same panel or appeared on various panels throughout a conference. They also show that COST co-sponsored a Tax Academy Policy Seminar in 2015 that ended its first day with an optional Cubs-Dodgers baseball game. The Prospect obtained the agendas from former conference attendees.

“They develop these personal relationships that give them a leg up: ‘Oh, this guy is a nice guy so he must be credible when he tells me why this particular bill Massachusetts just enacted to tax corporations is bad,’” the second attendee said. “That’s what has become so problematic.”

An NCSL spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the critiques and declined to provide a copy of the agenda for the upcoming National Conference of State Legislatures meeting in Chicago this July.

The spokesperson noted that NCSL is funded primarily by dues collected from state members and from the foundation. In fiscal year 2025, the foundation provided $3.4 million, according to its most recent annual report. The spokesperson did not respond to a question about the amount provided by state members.

THE TOP NCSL FOUNDATION DONORS are a group of 43 corporations that together have donated at least $50,000 each for a total of $2.2 million. The vast majority of the Capitol Circle Sponsors are known for lobbying against worker protections, taxation, and regulation, as well as supporting or engaging in busting unions, violating antitrust laws, and seeking to overturn consumer protections. Some of the corporations at this tier are Airbnb, Amazon, Chevron, Eli Lilly, Google, Honeywell, JPMorgan Chase, the National Beer Wholesalers Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Oracle, rental car company Turo, Verizon, and Walmart.

The Platinum tier of sponsorship requires a $30,000 minimum and includes Apple, Chick-fil-A, Cigna, CVS Health, Deloitte, DoorDash, HCA Healthcare, Kalshi, Live Nation, Lowe’s, Meta, Pepsi, Salesforce, Starbucks, StubHub, Visa, and Waystar.

Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boston Scientific, Moderna, and NASCAR are among those in the Silver Sponsor group, which requires a minimum of $10,000.

Some former attendees noted that there are organizations working in the public interest that also pay into the foundation, including America’s Credit Unions, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The second attendee who spoke to the Prospect said it was a struggle to get their organization to pay, which the attendee wanted their group to do because they were upset by the lack of public-oriented representation during panels.

In certain instances, top donors get an entire platform to themselves, as the American Kratom Association did at a conference last year. Its lobbyist is a Capitol Circle foundation sponsor, the highest level that requires a $50,000 minimum; the association wants states to pass laws it says protect consumers, which critics say really protect the industry.

Kratom is a Southeast Asian plant whose leaves can be consumed in various ways, including as a powder or a tea, and is sold as a way to quit opioid addiction, boost energy levels and mood, and kill pain. Earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control said that between 2015 and last year, the National Poison Data System found a 1,200 percent increase in kratom-related poisonings. The Mayo Clinic calls it “unsafe and ineffective.”

But it’s also a growing business, according to India-based consultant Maximize Market Research. Global profits came to $2.56 billion last year and will likely grow to nearly $7.8 billion by 2032. The American Kratom Association wants in on that. Its lead lobbyist is C. McClain “Mac” Haddow, a former chief of staff of the Department of Health and Human Services under the Reagan administration, who in 1987 pleaded guilty to felony charges for accepting kickbacks and arranging improper payments for his wife. He was sentenced to a year in prison. He subsequently got a lobbying gig in Virginia without disclosing that he spent time in lockup, which angered Virginia officials when they found out.

Haddow took the microphone and called for what he termed commonsense kratom legislation, a recording of his speech shows. (Haddow had earlier blamed irresponsible consumers for the injuries and death kratom caused them, saying, “Can we regulate stupid? I can’t do that—no one can.”)

THE NCSL HAS BEEN A WAY FOR EXECUTIVES to exert influence over state lawmaking ever since it was founded in 1975, federal documents from its early years show. Ten years later, the Public Affairs Council, a group that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had founded for workers in public administration and policy, gave the NCSL its seal of approval (and its endorsement of the NCSL’s inclusion of lobbyists) in 1985, when it said that the NCSL offered an “excellent opportunity to meet and exchange ideas” with leading lawmakers and “veteran corporate lobbyists,” according to a declassified document posted in the CIA’s online Freedom of Information Act reading room.

The experiences of more recent attendees say that’s still the case, but that the NCSL has raised the barrier for entry over the last decade so high that nonprofits and other smaller organizations are effectively shut out. Up until ten years ago, the second attendee said, the group’s tax policy task force meetings were open to anyone. If they were not already a sponsor, the NCSL would charge a nominal fee. Then it began charging a minimum of $5,000 annually, which gave attendees access to a private dinner and allowed payers to participate in a call to discuss what the agenda items and speakers would be for future meetings, then increased the total fee to $15,000.

A potent example of what that means for panel discussions came in 2012, just four years after the Great Recession wiped out 40 percent of Black wealth. Panelists for a discussion about state economic issues were Business Roundtable President John Engler, Caterpillar CEO Douglas Oberhelman, and State Farm CEO Edward Rust Jr. They took the stage to complain about how unfair and confusing it was that Americans would resent business executives.

“Money, like everything, has seeped in and is corrupting what the process needs to be. It’s not surprising. Money is running everything,” Bolkcom said. “It’s a pay-to-play in Washington, D.C., right now; the president is grifting off of the American people and the Treasury.” Like them, he said, “the NCSL has been infiltrated.”