Hi HN,

I’m the board chair at Strong Towns[1]. I normally lay low on these topics but I'm seeing some incorrect info among the top comments, so I wanted to respond to a few things.

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1. What is this all about?

Chuck is a licensed PE in Minnesota, and has maintained his license for years even though he was working in advocacy, not practicing engineering.

There's busy work to keep a license active. Chuck accidentally missed filing a renewal form and paying a fee in 2018, but continued all other requirements, such as taking required CE classes.

This is actually so common that there's a simple procedure for late filing with the state. Chuck filed and paid his late fees, and the state renewed his license with no comment.

About six weeks _after_ renewing his license, the state filed a complaint against Chuck accusing him of committing fraud because his bio on our website said he was a "professional engineer" during a window of time when his renewal was late.

There's no precedent for this. There are many PE's actually practicing engineering and signing documents with overdue renewal forms every year. They file late and get renewed with no issue.

During negotiations with the state, their comments made it clear the licensing board is seeking to use their power to discredit and silence Chuck's advocacy, hence the ongoing lawsuit to defend Chuck's right to free speech.

(Longer version here: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/5/23/lawsuit)

The linked article explains why Chuck is now choosing to move his license to "retired" status in 2022 rather than renew it again.

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2. What is Strong Towns all about?

I've seen several comments here suggesting we're some kind of anti-car environmental thing, which is not correct.

Strong Towns is principally focused on municipal fiscal and economic health. We work with cities and towns that are struggling to keep the lights on and provide basic, functional services, and try to help them (a) understand how they got into the mess they're in, and (b) get out of it.

This connects with cars because the status quo in the US is as follows: typically the federal and state governments offer lots of funding for new roadways and roadway expansion for economic development purposes, but don't cover maintenance.

Many cities have much more infrastructure to maintain than their tax base can support, and also weak growth, so expansion is a bad idea. Nevertheless, cities usually seek and receive expansion road expansions because, culturally, we expect building more roads to make us more wealthy, and don't really question whether we're over-building or whether new / expanded roads will pay off.

Thus we advocate ending highway expansion (in most cases), and advocate better utilizing our existing infrastructure.

We are pro-walkability because walkable places are infrastructure efficient, therefore cost-effective and wealth-creating, which correlates with the outcomes we care about.

We also care a lot about transparency in municipal accounting, safe streets, housing, and removing unnecessary regulation (in particular parking mandates and certain kinds of zoning).

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It's Sunday and I'm headed out with my family, but I'll check in on this a bit and try to answer questions if you all have any.

[1]: https://www.strongtowns.org/board