Seattle Chamber of Commerce announces opposition to AWB and Tim Eyman’s I‑1185

Great news: Ear­li­er today, the Seat­tle Metro Cham­ber of Com­merce announced that after care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, it has decid­ed to join the oppo­si­tion to Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1185, which would reim­pose the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al two-thirds vote require­ment to raise rev­enue on the state Legislature.

The deci­sion is sig­nif­i­cant because the pri­ma­ry finan­cial force behind I‑1185 is the Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness, which calls itself the state’s cham­ber of com­merce, and because the Seat­tle Cham­ber sup­port­ed I‑1053 two years ago. As was the case with I‑1053, AWB exec­u­tive Don Brunell and his asso­ciates were instru­men­tal in mar­shal­ing lob­by­ists to write checks to Tim Eyman and his pals Eddie Agazarm and Roy Ruffi­no to pay for sig­na­tures for I‑1185.

We under­stand the AWB recent­ly sent Amber Carter to join Tim Eyman in pitch­ing I‑1185 to the Seat­tle Cham­ber. But the Cham­ber’s Pol­i­cy Coun­cil was per­suad­ed by NO on I‑1185 co-chairs Reuven Car­lyle and Doug Mac­Don­ald (both friends of NPI) to take a coura­geous posi­tion against the measure.

Here’s the ratio­nale the Cham­ber laid out today for its stand:

The res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed by the Chamber’s Board of Trustees notes that if passed, I‑1185 would make it more dif­fi­cult to exe­cute two key com­po­nents of the Chamber’s strate­gic plan: pass­ing a long-term, com­pre­hen­sive trans­porta­tion fund­ing pack­age, and secur­ing invest­ments in K‑12 and high­er edu­ca­tion. “Invest­ments in Washington’s edu­ca­tion and trans­porta­tion sys­tems are essen­tial to keep­ing our state a com­pet­i­tive place to do busi­ness,” said Cham­ber Pres­i­dent and CEO Maud Daudon.

Daudon explained that while the Cham­ber sup­port­ed Ini­tia­tive 1053 in 2010 as a tool for fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, Cham­ber mem­bers con­clud­ed that lock­ing the leg­is­la­ture into a super­ma­jor­i­ty require­ment for anoth­er two years would make it vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to address our state’s edu­ca­tion fund­ing cri­sis and to make cru­cial improve­ments to our state’s infra­struc­ture. “These are press­ing needs that can’t wait until 2015. A sim­ple major­i­ty is the thresh­old for any oth­er mea­sure that our leg­is­la­ture pass­es. I‑1185 only extends the time it takes to make deci­sions on vital investments.”

NPI oppos­es I‑1185 because, like I‑1053 and I‑960, it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, unfair, and unsound. Our Mod­el Res­o­lu­tion Oppos­ing I‑1185 lays out the case for why we are opposed to this poor­ly con­ceived initiative.

We applaud the Seat­tle Cham­ber’s deci­sion to join the oppo­si­tion to I‑1185, and we invite oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als still on the fence to do the same.