OEA, AFT sue Oregon's Tim Eyman (Bill Sizemore) for creating sham charity

How appropriate... a couple days before Halloween, two Oregon unions representing thousands of teachers are going after Oregon's zombie version of Tim Eyman (Bill Sizemore) who just keeps coming back to mess with Oregon no matter how hard he falls. Sizemore bought his way onto the ballot four times last year with money from multimillionaire Loren Parks (Sizemore's Dunmire).

Jeff Mapes has the story:

The unions won a civil racketeering judgment against Sizemore in 2002, and this time they filed a lawsuit accusing him of setting up a "sham charitable organization" used to funnel Parks money into four initiative campaigns on the 2008 ballot.

Sizemore, who has decried the 2002 legal judgment as politically biased, will no doubt say this is yet another attempt by powerful public employee unions to shut him down. But there have been plenty of questions raised about Sizemore's financial maneuvering before 2008, and conservative activists have already been trying to cut him out of the action.

To say that Sizemore is a shady operator is really an understatement. Compared to Sizemore, Eyman is a decent guy... sort of.

Actually, never mind. I take that back.

(Sorry Tim, you've lied and disregarded public disclosure law too many times to be considered a decent guy. Not to mention your cynical, me-first, initiatives engineered to prey on the fears of a gullible public).

Anyway... it's good to see that OEA and AFT are going after Sizemore. Somebody has to put a stop to his schemes. Oregon lucked out last year; voters defeated all four of the measures Sizemore got on the ballot with Parks' money.

More information on the suit from the unions' news release:

Today’s action centers on Sizemore and Parks’ use of another sham charitable foundation to gather signatures for and to promote four ballot measures during the 2008 general election campaign. The foundation was utilized to funnel money for Sizemore’s political activities. Many of the allegations made in the plaintiffs’ suit were referenced and substantiated in a 2008 ruling issued by Multnomah County Judge Janice Wilson in which she found Sizemore in contempt of court.

“It’s clear that Sizemore and Parks have teamed up in order to subvert the initiative process,” says Richard Schwarz, AFT-Oregon Executive Director. “It’s time they were held accountable for corrupting Oregon’s initiative system. Anyone wanting to make laws ought to live by those we already have.”

The suit alleges the racketeering conspiracy between Sizemore and Parks was so prevalent that it required Sizemore to commit perjury on multiple occasions to cover up their activities. There are 33 different and separate instances of Sizemore’s alleged perjury included in the plaintiffs’ suit.

No matter how many times Grover Norquist clones like Eyman and Sizemore are defeated, they just come back to strike again. Since they're zombies, about the only thing we can do to keep them from collectively wrecking the Pacific Northwest is to pin them to the ground (so to speak) every time they get up.

That's why it's so great to see that OEA and AFT are suing Sizemore again.

(To learn more about NPI's work to maintain a year-round opposition to Tim Eyman and Michael Dunmire, visit Permanent Defense.)