DENVER — For decades, a well-funded conservative group has helped state lawmakers across the United States write legislation to rein in unions, expand charter schools, and lower taxes.
Now, it’s expanding to the final frontier: normally nonpartisan city halls and county governments, which have become a bastion of liberal resistance to President Trump.
The American Legislative Exchange Council is one of the country’s most prominent conservative groups, and its annual convention in Denver last week drew thousands of state legislators and lobbyists for panels on school choice and marijuana legalization, and speeches from conservative luminaries like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and former senator James DeMint.
But as attendees rubbed shoulders with the right’s elite, a few dozen crowded into a small conference room for the fourth meeting of the American City County Exchange, the conservative group’s new local government wing.
The city council project is the brainchild of Jon Russell, a councilman from the Virginia town of Culpepper, population 18,000. He was dissatisfied that the traditional, nonpartisan municipal groups, like the National League of Cities, seemed to constantly think more government was the answer to problems.
‘‘Now we can communicate with 2,500 elected officials across the country that we know share our values and push back against some of the progressivism that’s gotten into cities,’’ Russell said.
Though the group is still young, it’s notched some significant accomplishments — most prominently helping distribute model legislation to end the automatic deduction of union dues from paychecks that 12 Kentucky counties implemented in 2014 as a precursor to that state becoming the 28th ‘‘right-to-work’’ state.
The exchange also distributes model legislation on everything from a taxpayer bill of rights that would require a supermajority to raise property taxes to measures requiring that cities explore all available materials to build sewer pipelines.
An official at the city council project, Bruce Hollands, is head of the PVC pipe association.
At the Denver meeting, Hollands gave a presentation to the roughly three-dozen attendees on how cities often rely excessively on iron pipes without enough bidding from manufacturers of other types.
Representatives of telephone companies gave presentations on new types of cellular service — and the need for different cellular towers — coming online.
And lobbyists from Uber and Airbnb touted the virtue of the sharing economy and state legislation that would prohibit cities from regulating it.
The value of states overruling city councils became something of a theme at the meeting, as liberals have hoped cities will pass measures to fight back against Trump’s administration.
With Republicans controlling 32 state legislatures, state houses have tried to prohibit cities from passing tax hikes, increasing the minimum wage or sheltering people who are in the country illegally.
