Bristol Warren Regional School Committee Chairperson Nicky Piper had already heard of the pointed questions circulating around her role in advocating for approval of the upcoming $200 million bond prior to this publication reaching out and asking her about them.

The questions, which could be seen spreading on local Facebook groups over the weekend and were more clearly defined in an email from Bristol resident Pete Hewett sent on Monday morning, essentially asked if Piper, School Committee Vice Chair Adam McGovern, and fellow school committee member Sarah Bullard had gone through the proper procedural steps before launching an advocacy group called “Building Bristol Warren’s Future,” which has undertaken various efforts to promote the approval of a $200 million school bond coming before voters on Tuesday, Nov. 7.

During a call asking about those inquiries on Monday morning, Piper had her receipts ready.

“When all of this started I wanted to be sure of how to go about the campaigning piece,” Piper said. “After the July 4 parade, I met with [Secretary of State] Gregg Amore and [State Treasurer] James Diossa and asked them about how this was done. It’s not like a campaign for a person and it’s not like a lobbying thing, it’s a particular type of campaign, which shouldn’t actually be called a campaign, it’s more like advocacy.”

The type of advocacy Piper was interested in undertaking is called Bond Question Advocacy (BQA), and requires the registration of a nonprofit entity with the Secretary of State’s office to track all fundraising and spending that occurs towards the goal of supporting a particular bond. Once the group is certified, they fall under the jurisdiction of the Board of Elections.

In this case, the group raised money to be used on lawn signs (about 100, Piper said), customized pencils to be handed out at community events where they met with voters to discuss the bond initiative throughout the summer and early fall, and about 500 stamps and associated printing costs for letters sent out to people who had applied for a vote-by-mail ballot.

Piper reported that as of Monday morning, the group had raised around $2,200 in total. She said it came from multiple public officials, which included Treasurer Diossa as well as local representatives Sen. Walter Felag Jr., Rep. June Speakman, and Rep. Jason Knight, in addition to a couple of private donors.

She said that she was currently in the process of filing the financial report to the Secretary of State’s office, because they would be eclipsing the threshold for money spent ($1,000) after an invoice was filed for the printing costs of those aforementioned 500 letters. She said whatever is left over after the election would be returned to donors.

Piper said to further ensure she was undertaking the advocacy process properly, she contacted Jason Gramitt, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Ethics Commission, before getting anything started.

“We had a long conversation about the ethics of a school committee member advocating for this,” she said. “He said he couldn’t give me an official determination unless there’s an official complaint, but in his words, ‘I would be concerned if a school committee member wasn’t advocating for a school bond.’”