The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance is questioning the funding sources of a pro-transit organization in Nashville. (Photo: John Partipilo)
A group pouring more than $2 million into passing Metro Nashville’s transportation referendum is being ordered to register as a political action committee in an effort to show who is funding it.
Whether that will bring transparency remains unclear because numerous groups with nonprofit status, most of them supporters of private-school vouchers, have skirted state campaign finance laws to hide their benefactors.
But the Registry of Election Finance sent a letter Tuesday to the attorney for Nashville Moves Action Fund — a nonprofit entity with a 501(c)4 tax designation that, technically, enables it to avoid listing donors – notifying him the group needs to file as a PAC because of the way it’s operating. The letter from Bill Young, executive director of the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance, to attorney Ben Gastel points out Nashville Moves, the entity behind Green Lights for Nashville, has received numerous contributions from registered multi-candidate campaign committees for the third quarter and pre-general reporting periods, factors that make it a political campaign committee under state law and require it to register.