Williamson Strong Ruled as Unregistered PAC

On Wednesday, school advocacy group Williamson Strong was found by a state campaign ethics committee to have operated as an unregistered PAC during the last school board election.

After reviewing the case for several months, the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance ruled that the Williamson Strong group would be fined $2,500 each for two charges: failure to register as a PAC and not filing campaign expenditures, for a total of $5,000 in fines.

Williamson County School Board member Susan Curlee brought over 100 pages of documentation to the ethics committee months ago, which revealed that the group had supported certain school board candidates over others and acted partisan, rather than just advocating for the community to get involved in the election.

Williamson Strong had denied the allegations of supporting certain candidates, and expenditures for the group did not pass the $250 threshold written into the law for campaign expenditures; however, the law also states that two or more people spending money and supporting candidates are to be classified as a PAC and must register with the state in order to operate legally.

Money spent by Williamson Strong was indeed little. Since their communications happen mainly online, through Facebook, email and their website, little more than the cost of their website domain and some Facebook advertising shows up on record, besides money spent on gathering voter data from past partisan elections.

The ethics committee stated that their position is not that they want groups like this to stop engaging voters, but if there are groups out there advocating for certain candidates they have to follow the rules set by the law.

“We’re not going anywhere,” says a post on Williamson Strong’s website. “We’re going to stick around and fight for strong public schools and for our ability as parents to be an engaged part of our community. This ruling was disappointing, but not unexpected, and has only strengthened our resolve to continue to fight for public education in Williamson County.”