NASHVILLE, Tn. (WTVF) — A lot of businesses, like banks and hospitals, will write off debts that they just cannot collect.
Now, NewsChannel 5 Investigates has found that the state has decided to no longer pursue nearly a million in unpaid fines.
And guess who should have paid these fines, but didn't? Hundreds of Tennesseans who ran for office.
To run for office, you have to do more than just put up a few campaign signs. There are forms you have to file and rules to follow, both when you run and after, if you're elected. And if you don't, you can face fines of up to $10,000 from the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance and Tennessee Ethics Commission.
But, over the last 30 years, hundreds of these fines have never been paid.
All told, it's more than $2.5 million.
Now the state has decided to no longer pursue nearly a million dollars of those fines.
"What we learned a lot of is that a lot of these were never able to be collected. They would just sit there," said Bill Young, executive director of the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance."
Young said when he took the job in 2019, he discovered that unpaid fines were dating back to 1991.
So last year, the Tennessee Legislature agreed to update the law to allow the Bureau to declare certain fines "uncollectible."
"We’ve got to show the public that we’ve made the effort to try to collect this money, that we’ve worked with the Attorney General’s office, and we’ve tried to find these people," Young said.
Young said his office went through the hundreds of names and pulled out those who had died or moved and left no forwarding address and they removed political action committees that had disbanded long ago. They also pulled out older cases where the paper files were thrown out years ago and smaller cases they felt were not worth the time or money to chase down.
Many of the fines the state will no longer pursue are as low as $250. But there are some as high as $10,000. And what were they for? Candidates, elected officials, and PACs have to disclose who gives money to their campaigns and how they spend that money. They also have to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. It's all to promote transparency and accountability. And those who don't turn in these reports face fines.
The state watchdog boards will usually send multiple reminders to pay the fine before turning the case over to the state Attorney General's Office for collection.
At least one board member expressed concern that the AG's office was part of the problem.
"Frankly. they (the AG's Office) don’t have the time, the ability or the resources," Registry member Tom Lawless said. "Bottom line they’re not set up for collections."
He then wondered aloud if there couldn't be a better way to get the still outstanding money.
And while there will surely be those who question just writing off so many old fines and so much money, Registry staff insists they're not writing them off.
"We’re not saying that we will never pursue them. We’re just saying right now it does not make financial sense to do so," Lauren Topping, the Registry Counsel, assured board members.
She added that the Registry staff and AG's Office will now focus on cases from 2017 to the present. Those unpaid fines add up to more than $1.5 million and include $465,000 owed by former state Rep. Jeremy Durham, R-Franklin, and $360,000 owed by former Metro councilman Jonathan Hall.
The money from the fines goes to the state's general fund. Anyone who owes money cannot run for office again until they pay what they owe.
