Tired of destructive, self-serving Eyman initiatives? Help us stop Tim’s profit machine

This morn­ing, at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex in Olympia, Tim Eyman and his pals Eddie Agazarm and Paul Jacob showed up to deliv­er what they said were 345,000 sig­na­tures for Ini­tia­tive 517, Eyman’s lat­est scheme, which is intend­ed to make it eas­i­er and cheap­er for Tim Eyman to qual­i­fy ini­tia­tives for the bal­lot every year, so he can eke even more prof­its out of his ini­tia­tive factory.

I attend­ed Eyman’s press con­fer­ence and respond­ed after­wards on behalf of all of the good peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton State who are sick and tired of destruc­tive, self-serv­ing Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives that drain our com­mon wealth, under­mine our plan of gov­ern­ment, and weak­en the vital pub­lic ser­vices we all rely on.

Fol­low­ing Eyman’s remarks, I announced that NPI is spear­head­ing the for­ma­tion of a new polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee to oppose I‑517: Stop Tim Eyman’s Prof­it Machine. Our goal is to build a strong and diverse statewide coali­tion to defeat this mea­sure and pro­tect the ini­tia­tive process — which Eyman already exploits on an annu­al basis — from fur­ther abuse and manip­u­la­tion. The ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum were cre­at­ed to allow the peo­ple to

Stop Tim Eyman’s Prof­it Machine is not an NPI project. It is a coali­tion open to all who are tired of destruc­tive Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives and want to help orga­nize oppo­si­tion to Eyman’s most self-serv­ing scheme yet. Twice dur­ing the past few years, Wash­ing­ton’s pro­gres­sive move­ment has come up short against Tim Eyman because no one stepped up to jump­start the oppo­si­tion. We can­not afford such a lead­er­ship vac­u­um now… or ever again. There is too much at stake.

I have been work­ing against Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tives for near­ly eleven years now, as long­time NPI read­ers and sup­port­ers know.

I’m com­mit­ted to oppos­ing Eyman and his prof­it machine because I care about Wash­ing­ton. I was born here, raised here, and have no inten­tion of ever liv­ing any­place else. I love to trav­el, but I also love to come home to Washington.

I want to live in a state that invests in its schools and uni­ver­si­ties, that keeps its parks and pub­lic lands open and acces­si­ble, that makes men­tal health treat­ment and restora­tive jus­tice a pri­or­i­ty, and that pays its teach­ers and first respon­ders a liv­ing wage. I want to live in a state where it is easy to start a busi­ness or a non­prof­it, where gov­ern­ment is open and respon­sive to the needs of the peo­ple, and where the most vul­ner­a­ble get the help they need instead of being ignored.

Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tives rep­re­sent a threat to that vision.

For more than a decade, Eyman has sought to turn Wash­ing­to­ni­ans against their own gov­ern­ment. He is relent­less; fail­ure does­n’t faze him (and why should it, for he makes mon­ey whether he wins or los­es). His ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry has churned out one destruc­tive mea­sure after anoth­er with each pass­ing year, backed by wealthy bene­fac­tors such as invest­ment banker Michael Dun­mire of Wood­inville, Belle­vue devel­op­er (and light rail oppo­nent) Kem­per Free­man, Jr., and big oil com­pa­nies like BP, Shell, Cono­coPhillips, and Tesoro.

Tim Eyman likes to por­tray him­self as a vir­tu­ous cham­pi­on of the peo­ple. But that’s a fic­tion. Eyman does not rep­re­sent the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State. He has nev­er had the courage to run for elect­ed office him­self. Instead, he belit­tles and insults peo­ple who do, while ped­dling schemes that make their jobs harder.

Nor is his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry a grass­roots oper­a­tion. Mon­ey from pow­er­ful inter­ests lubri­cates its gears, and Eyman serves as the pitch­man for his schemes. Rarely does he take a back­seat. In 2002, after he admit­ted hav­ing tak­en more than $150,000 from his own sup­port­ers for his per­son­al use, he went into self-imposed exile, and turned over the I‑776 cam­paign check­book to his asso­ciates — but not before he said this to Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ David Ammons:

Eyman said he intends to con­tin­ue push­ing ini­tia­tives, but he intends to be paid, and to be up front about it.

“I want to con­tin­ue to advo­cate issues and I want to make a lot of mon­ey doing it,” he said.

That is one of my favorite Eyman quotes. It’s worth noth­ing that Eyman did­n’t tell Ammons, “I’d like rea­son­able com­pen­sa­tion for the work I’m doing” or “I’ve spear­head­ed ini­ti­atves in the past as a vol­un­teer, but I real­ize now I need to find a way to pay the bills… I’m going to ask my sup­port­ers if they mind if I take a salary.” No, what he Eyman said was, “I want to con­tin­ue to advo­cate issues and I want to make a lot of mon­ey doing it.”

And he has. Last year, it appears he made out like a bandit.

We can see from look­ing at PDC records that more than $1.2 mil­lion was spent by the Ini­tia­tive 1185 cam­paign committee.

Of that $1.2 mil­lion, $1,173,324.99 went to “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions”, a shell busi­ness run by Eyman’s asso­ciates Roy Ruffi­no and Eddie Agazarm.

I use the words shell busi­ness because “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions” is not run like a legit­i­mate firm by hon­est entre­pre­neurs. Roy and Eddie were actu­al­ly fined more than $8,000 in 2011 by the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries for vio­lat­ing Wash­ing­ton’s work­er pro­tec­tion laws. Since being audit­ed and fined, Roy and Eddie have dis­solved and reformed “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions” as a lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny, or LLC.

They now require peti­tion­ers to self-reg­is­ter with the Depart­ment of Rev­enue and the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries as a con­di­tion of being offered a con­tract. That way, Roy and Eddie don’t have to wor­ry about tak­ing care of the peo­ple who work for them. (So much for com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism, right?)

Over the course of the past year, we have learned a lot about how Roy and Eddie oper­ate. Peo­ple they have mis­treat­ed have brave­ly stepped for­ward to tell their sto­ries, includ­ing Rick Walther, Steve Bur­dick, and Miles Stanley.

Thanks to their tes­ti­mo­ny, we know that back in April, Roy and Eddie attempt­ed to force all of their peti­tion crews to gath­er equal num­bers of sig­na­tures for I‑1185 and I‑517, while only receiv­ing pay­ment for the I‑1185 sig­na­tures. Peti­tion­ers who did­n’t like this arrange­ment were told they would be fired. Ulti­mate­ly, Roy and Eddie came up with a new arrange­ment: Instead of pay­ing around $1.00 for every I‑1185 sig­na­ture, peti­tion­ers would receive sev­en­ty-five cents for each I‑1185 sig­na­ture and twen­ty-five cents for each I‑517 signature.

Tim Eyman has claimed that no mon­ey for I‑1185 was used to pay for I‑517 sig­na­tures. But he could be lying, as he often has in the past. We’d like to see a foren­sic account­ing done of his and Cit­i­zen Solu­tion’s finances to see whether pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws were fol­lowed or not.

This much we do know: Most of the mon­ey that went to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions to pay for I‑1185 sig­na­tures did not go to the peti­tion crews. It was pocked by Ruffi­no and Agazarm (and pos­si­bly Eyman as well) as prof­it. Miles and Steve have tes­ti­fied in sworn affadi­v­its that they were being paid a dol­lar per sig­na­ture, and we know that oth­er peti­tion­ers were col­lect­ing for the same lev­el of com­pen­sa­tion. The Sec­re­tary of State’s office report­ed last July that 320,003 sig­na­tures were sub­mit­ted for I‑1185. If each sig­na­ture cost Ruffi­no and Agazarm a dol­lar, that would mean the cost of the sig­na­ture dri­ve was around $320,000.

For argu­men­t’s sake, let’s assume the total costs of the sig­na­ture dri­ve actu­al­ly came to $1.25 a sig­na­ture. That’s more than what the peti­tion­ers were being paid, but it allows us to sup­pose there may have been oth­er costs asso­ci­at­ed with the sig­na­ture dri­ve. If we mul­ti­ply $1.25 by 320,003, we get $400,003.75. That still leaves more than $700,000 unac­count­ed for.

What hap­pened to all of that mon­ey? Where did it go? We know it did­n’t go to the work­ers who gath­ered sig­na­tures out­side of shop­ping malls, sta­di­ums, and fer­ry ter­mi­nals. We can only con­clude it was pock­et­ed as profit.

Ruffi­no, Agazarm, and Eyman have the means to take good care of the peo­ple who col­lect sig­na­tures for them. But they don’t. They are inter­est­ed in mak­ing mon­ey on their terms, and they have no com­pul­sion about exploit­ing oth­er peo­ple to do that.

If I‑517 pass­es, Ruffi­no, Agazarm, and Eyman will be able to turn peti­tion­ing into a year-round busi­ness. State law cur­rent­ly pro­vides for a six-month win­dow for gath­er­ing sig­na­tures on ini­tia­tives to the peo­ple (Jan­u­ary to July). Eyman wants to length­en that peri­od by six months, so that each July, right after sub­mit­ting sig­na­tures for one ini­tia­tive, he could imme­di­ate­ly begin work­ing on a scheme for the ensu­ing year. Eyman does­n’t care that ini­tia­tives to the Leg­is­la­ture already have a longer-win­dow of about nine months — a win­dow he just took advan­tage of to get the sig­na­tures he need­ed for I‑517. He wants his schemes to go direct­ly on the bal­lot with­out hav­ing to wait for poten­tial leg­isla­tive action.

Eyman does a good job of mak­ing him­self sound like an all-around good guy… a guy with good and noble inten­tions. He knows how to put peo­ple at ease… he can be dis­arm­ing, even charm­ing, when talk­ing to reporters. And he excels at orches­trat­ing media cov­er­age for his schemes. The most dan­ger­ous place in Wash­ing­ton is between Tim Eyman and a tele­vi­sion cam­era, as the Post-Intel­li­gencer’s Joel Con­nel­ly likes to say.

But there is noth­ing noble about Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. It is fueled by greed and exploita­tion. Eyman has said that he’s in this to make mon­ey for him­self, as I showed ear­li­er. And coin­ci­den­tal­ly, his pal Eddie Agazarm has been even more explic­it. Last year, only hours after Agazarm con­clud­ed a meet­ing about I‑517 with peti­tion crew chiefs, he sent out an email try­ing to assuage con­cerns that ask­ing peo­ple to col­lect I‑517 sig­na­tures for no com­pen­sa­tion was unfair:

Some­body said that they’d have to be ask­ing their peo­ple to work I‑517 for free.

That is def­i­nite­ly not the case as ALL peti­tion­ers and ALL man­agers will get paid very hand­some­ly once I‑517 pass­es. Think of the extra mon­ey we ALL make when we can work big turf ALL the time. Think of the mon­ey we can ALL make when we have peti­tion­ing year round. Think of all the extra peti­tions we can car­ry. Oh… we are gonna get paid for sure.

That sec­ond para­graph there pret­ty much says it all. Mon­ey is what this is real­ly all about. Prof­it­ing from pro­mot­ing an end­less series of destruc­tive, cyn­i­cal ini­tia­tives that harm Wash­ing­ton’s qual­i­ty of life. That is the last thing our state needs.

We some­times get asked, by the way, if we are auto­mat­i­cal­ly opposed to every­thing Tim Eyman spon­sors. We are not, but as I said this morn­ing, we have nev­er seen a Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive to end home­less­ness. Or an Eyman plan for clean­ing up Puget Sound. Or a pro­pos­al to repair the dam­age caused by his own ini­tia­tives from the ear­ly 2000s. All we have ever seen from Tim Eyman are ini­tia­tives that cause harm and inflict pain, often in unseen ways (think death by a thou­sand cuts).

Eyman avoids talk­ing about the costs and con­se­quences of his schemes, pre­fer­ring to stick to his talk­ing points even when challenged.

That is why I went down to Olympia this morning.

When Tim Eyman goes unre­spond­ed to, we don’t have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about those costs and con­se­quences, because the con­ver­sa­tion becomes one-sided and dom­i­nat­ed by Eyman.

Reporters from the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, The News Tri­bune, The Her­ald of Everett, KING5, and KCPQ (Q13 Fox) attend­ed Eyman’s press con­fer­ence. Most of them lat­er report­ed on the sig­na­ture turn-in for their respec­tive pub­li­ca­tions. What fol­lows are some excerpts from the sto­ries they wrote, or seg­ments they filed.

From Q13 Fox:

Eyman’s crit­ics were quick to pounce on his new effort.

“This is a made up prob­lem, a man­u­fac­tured, pre­tend prob­lem, and it’s not a cri­sis,” said State Rep. Reuven Car­lyle.  “No one else is com­plain­ing about this issue. The time under state law is absolute­ly sufficient.”

A new group formed to fight back at Eyman’s lat­est effort Thursday.

“This is not about grass­roots democ­ra­cy,” said Andrew Vil­leneuve, Co-Chair of No on I‑517.  “This ini­tia­tive is real­ly about mak­ing it eas­i­er for Eyman to do peti­tion­ing year round, for his asso­ciates to do peti­tion­ing year round, because that is their busi­ness. That is how they make their money.”

From the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer:

A com­mit­tee called Stop Tim Eyman’s Prof­it Machine:  No on 517 announced its for­ma­tion in Olympia moments after Eyman filed his mea­sure.  It is the brain­child of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, a hand-to-mouth group of young “net­roots” activists that has opposed past Eyman initiatives.

The com­mit­tee charges that I‑517 is designed for the pri­ma­ry pur­pose of enrich­ing Eyman.  The ini­tia­tive would, it charges, make it “eas­i­er and cheap­er for Eyman to oper­ate his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry, in part by mak­ing peti­tion­ing a year-round busi­ness for Eyman and his associates.

From The Her­ald of Everett:

Andrew Vil­leneuve of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, a long­time Eyman neme­sis, watched the trio speak to reporters then announced for­ma­tion of a com­mit­tee to fight the mea­sure. Its name, he said, will be “Stop Tim Eyman’s Prof­it Machine.”

Vil­leneuve said if the ini­tia­tive became law spon­sors of ini­tia­tives would gain six addi­tion­al months to gath­er sig­na­tures. That means peti­tion­ers could be out and about year-round which would make the busi­ness of ini­tia­tives and sig­na­ture gath­er­ing more lucra­tive, he said.

“This ini­tia­tive is just intend­ed to make it eas­i­er and cheap­er for peo­ple like Tim Eyman to do ini­tia­tives,” he said.

And the Asso­ci­at­ed Press:

Andrew Vil­leneuve of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, who has long opposed Eyman’s ini­tia­tives, issued a state­ment Thurs­day crit­i­ciz­ing the mea­sure, say­ing that the aim of I‑517 “is to make it eas­i­er and cheap­er for Tim Eyman to run initiatives.”

If you want to help get involved in the coali­tion to defeat Ini­tia­tive 517 and stop Tim Eyman’s prof­it machine, please sign up to help today over at Per­ma­nent Defense. This isn’t going to be easy. We would appre­ci­ate hav­ing you on board.