Wash­ing­ton State’s Con­sti­tu­tion has once again been upheld and a destruc­tive, decep­tive Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive that sought to vio­late it firm­ly struck down.

In a deci­sion sup­port­ed by all nine jus­tices, the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court today ruled that Tim Eyman’s I‑976 (which sought to wipe out bil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing for mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture across the state) vio­lates Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 19 of the state’s plan of gov­ern­ment. The Court held:

The peo­ple of our state have the pow­er to pro­pose and approve leg­is­la­tion. When the peo­ple act in their leg­isla­tive capac­i­ty, they are, like any oth­er leg­isla­tive body, bound by con­sti­tu­tion­al con­straints. Under our con­sti­tu­tion, “[n]o bill shall embrace more than one sub­ject, and that shall be expressed in the title.” Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure 976 con­tains more than one sub­ject, and its sub­ject is not accu­rate­ly expressed in its title. Accord­ing­ly, it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

In addi­tion to declar­ing the ini­tia­tive uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, the jus­tices remand­ed the mat­ter back to King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge Mar­shall Fer­gu­son “for fur­ther pro­ceed­ings con­sis­tent with this opin­ion.” (Fer­gu­son had pre­vi­ous­ly ruled that most of the ini­tia­tive was con­sti­tu­tion­al while strik­ing down two sec­tions.)

Eight jus­tices signed the lead opin­ion authored by Jus­tice Steven Gon­za­lez, who is one of the most for­mi­da­ble legal minds in Wash­ing­ton State… a jurist of excep­tion­al wis­dom, integri­ty, and char­ac­ter. Jus­tice Bar­bara Mad­sen filed a con­cur­ring opin­ion agree­ing that I‑976 vio­lates the sin­gle sub­ject rule of the Con­sti­tu­tion, but dis­agree­ing that it vio­lates the sub­ject-in-title require­ment.

As a con­se­quence of the deci­sion, I‑976 will not go into effect. Bil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing for roads, bus­es, fer­ries, side­walks, bike lanes, trains, the State Patrol, and projects to improve mobil­i­ty, includ­ing the move­ment of freight, will be pre­served. This is a huge vic­to­ry for Wash­ing­ton State’s future.

We’ve post­ed a state­ment at NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense hail­ing the deci­sion.

Kudos to the legal team that suc­cess­ful­ly brought this legal chal­lenge, includ­ing David Hack­ett, David James Eldred, Jenifer C. Merkel, and Erin Baine Jack­son of King Coun­ty (which NPI is proud to call home!), Car­olyn Boies, Eri­ca Franklin, and John Ben­jamin Kerr Scho­chet of the City of Seat­tle, and Paci­fi­ca Law Group’s team: Matthew Segal, Paul Lawrence, Jes­si­ca Anne Skel­ton, and Shae Blood.

NPI is very proud to be a client of Paci­fi­ca Law Group.

Among Paci­fi­ca’s oth­er clients is the Wash­ing­ton State Tran­sit Asso­ci­a­tion (WSTA), one of the plain­tiffs Paci­fi­ca ably rep­re­sent­ed in this case.

“We are pleased with the Court’s deci­sion to rec­og­nize the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of this ini­tia­tive,” said WSTA Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Justin Leighton in a state­ment inform­ing the local tran­sit agen­cies that WSTA serves of the deci­sion.

“Our State Con­sti­tu­tion, the bedrock of our laws, out­lines firm­ly how an ini­tia­tive should be pre­sent­ed to the peo­ple for a vote, and I‑976 did not pass that test.”

“More­over, I‑976 was explic­it­ly designed to under­mine the direct fund­ing to pub­lic safe­ty on our roads, preser­va­tion and main­te­nance of our bridges, and hit­ting home to us all, the mobil­i­ty and access for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, seniors, tran­sit-depen­dent, and essen­tial rid­ers,” Leighton observed. “It was incum­bent upon us to ensure the due dili­gence of bring­ing this case for­ward late in 2019, not just for our mem­bers but for our rid­ers and com­mu­ni­ties.”

In addi­tion to the Wash­ing­ton State Tran­sit Asso­ci­a­tion, plain­tiffs includ­ed King Coun­ty, the City of Seat­tle, the Port of Seat­tle, Garfield Coun­ty Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty (the name­sake of the case), Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit, Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Cities, Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union of Wash­ing­ton, and Michael Rogers.

King Coun­ty and Seat­tle were rep­re­sent­ed by their own coun­cil, while Paci­fi­ca rep­re­sent­ed the oth­er plain­tiffs, includ­ing Garfield Coun­ty Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty, the named lead plain­tiff. (Hur­rah for Garfield Coun­ty, which stood up and fought to save its rur­al bus and para­tran­sit ser­vice!)

King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, who is a long­time sup­port­er of NPI’s research, also praised the Supreme Court for its well rea­soned deci­sion.

“Today’s rul­ing resound­ing­ly rejects this uncon­sti­tu­tion­al mea­sure, just as the peo­ple of King Coun­ty reject­ed it at the polls, and we can now move for­ward to build a trans­porta­tion sys­tem and econ­o­my that gives every per­son the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a bet­ter future,” said Con­stan­tine.

“I‑976 threat­ened to reduce or elim­i­nate local and vot­er-approved fund­ing for pub­lic trans­porta­tion, bridges and roads, and oth­er crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture and ser­vices across our state,” the Exec­u­tive not­ed.

“It jeop­ar­dized near­ly $100 mil­lion in fund­ing in King Coun­ty, includ­ing Region­al Mobil­i­ty Grant Pro­gram awards that fund RapidRide expan­sion and reli­a­bil­i­ty improve­ments, and fund­ing for tran­sit serv­ing per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.”

“At King Coun­ty, we are grat­i­fied to be able to con­tin­ue to work with local juris­dic­tions, oth­er tran­sit agen­cies, and part­ners to fund safe, sus­tain­able, and equi­table mobil­i­ty for all our res­i­dents.”

“Tran­sit and mobil­i­ty invest­ments will be cen­tral to our recov­ery as we rebuild from the eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, and I’m pleased to have this shad­ow of uncer­tain­ty lift­ed by the Court.”

“Today is a good day,” agreed Trans­porta­tion Choic­es Coali­tion.

“2020 brings us good news?!!,” TCC’s Keiko Budech tweet­ed.

“I‑976 was a dev­as­tat­ing blow to #WA’s trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Today the State Supreme Court ruled it uncon­sti­tu­tion­al! This is a big win! We need more trans­porta­tion choic­es to get peo­ple where they need to go, not less.”

That’s exact­ly how we feel.

Free­dom of mobil­i­ty is a mat­ter of free­dom. You should­n’t be forced to dri­ve to get where you want to go. And if you do want to dri­ve to get where you’re going, then you ought to be able to reach your des­ti­na­tion safe­ly and with­out the headaches involved in sit­ting in bumper to bumper traf­fic jams.

Trans­porta­tion Choic­es Coali­tion is so named because Wash­ing­to­ni­ans deserve choic­es. I‑976’s defeat means that invest­ments in mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture are like­ly to con­tin­ue. The pan­dem­ic has already tak­en a toll on oth­er rev­enue sources. Imple­ment­ing I‑976 (as Repub­li­cans now want to do through leg­is­la­tion) would gut what’s left of the trans­porta­tion bud­get.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee knows how unwise and fool­ish that would be.

Unlike his pre­de­ces­sors Gary Locke and Chris Gre­goire, Inslee has shown zero inter­est in adopt­ing Eyman’s agen­da and mak­ing it his own mere­ly because Eyman suc­ceed­ed in run­ning anoth­er con against the vot­ers.

In addi­tion, Repub­li­cans are out of pow­er in the Leg­is­la­ture and are high­ly like­ly to remain out of pow­er in 2021 and 2022, as Democ­rats appear poised to retain their robust majori­ties in both cham­bers, and per­haps even build upon them.

Repub­li­cans will be rel­e­gat­ed to clam­or­ing for a spe­cial ses­sion and a vote on an I‑976 do-over bill from the side­lines. Democ­rats must reject these pro­pos­als.

Wash­ing­to­ni­ans do deserve leg­is­la­tion to improve our state’s tax code. We’d like to see a vehi­cle fee sched­ule that is fair­er and eas­i­er to under­stand, and so do most leg­is­la­tors we’ve talked to. That’s an achiev­able reform.

We also sore­ly need ini­tia­tive reform.

His­to­ry repeat­ed itself today when the Supreme Court struck down I‑976. It’s a movie we’ve all seen before, as I‑976 is the lat­est in a long line of Eyman ini­tia­tives to be declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The Court would not have need­ed to pro­tect our Con­sti­tu­tion from I‑976, how­ev­er, if those vot­ers who turned out last autumn had reject­ed it. And those vot­ers were lied to, by spon­sor Tim Eyman and by I‑976 itself.

We need to over­haul how bal­lot titles (the only lan­guage that vot­ers see on their bal­lots sum­ma­riz­ing the mea­sures) are devel­oped and cho­sen, to elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty that vot­ers will see mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions on their bal­lots in the future.

Had vot­ers not been lied to in 2019, they might have decid­ed I‑976 dif­fer­ent­ly.

We can’t know what would have hap­pened, of course.

But what we do know is what our Con­sti­tu­tion says.

Our founders insist­ed that pro­posed laws accu­rate­ly describe their sub­jects with­in their titles. They also insist­ed that pro­posed laws be lim­it­ed to a sin­gle sub­ject to pre­vent logrolling. Tim Eyman delib­er­ate­ly ignored these rules in his quest to wreck as much mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture as pos­si­ble.

Tim has also repeat­ed­ly tried to argue that vot­ers weren’t con­fused.

But that’s an absurd thing for some­one who lied to vot­ers to say.

We doc­u­ment­ed and debunked many of Eyman’s lies about I‑976 at Per­ma­nent Defense dur­ing the cam­paign. Despite our efforts to cor­rect the record, those lies received lots of air­play dur­ing the runup to the elec­tion, and undoubt­ed­ly influ­enced the vote. Here are some of the lies that Eyman told:

• Debunk­ing Tim Eyman’s I‑976 whop­pers: There is no mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar sur­plus avail­able to back­fill I‑976 cuts
• Debunk­ing Tim Eyman’s I‑976 whop­pers: This mea­sure is no “hair­cut”
• Debunk­ing Tim Eyman’s I‑976 whop­pers: Car tabs actu­al­ly *do* pay for bridges and roads

Per­haps the biggest lie of all was the state­ment in the bal­lot title that said vot­er approved charges would be exempt from the roll­back of vehi­cle fees. There is no such exemp­tion in the ini­tia­tive, as the Supreme Court not­ed.

Eyman’s mar­ket­ing slo­gan was also a lie. Eyman told Wash­ing­to­ni­ans they would get “thir­ty dol­lar car tabs” if the mea­sure went through. But in real­i­ty, the low­est any­one would pay would be $43.25 had the ini­tia­tive sur­vived legal scruti­ny. $43.25 is not thir­ty bucks. Eyman him­self was forced to con­cede in an inter­view with The News Tri­bune of Taco­ma that I‑976 does­n’t deliv­er “$30 tabs”.

For­tu­nate­ly, the pile of dis­hon­esty and bad pol­i­cy that is I‑976 is no more. Good rid­dance to I‑976. After a mul­ti-year effort to van­quish this hor­ri­ble ini­tia­tive, we have won. We will remain vig­i­lant and on guard through our Per­ma­nent Defense project to pro­tect Wash­ing­ton from more bad bal­lot mea­sures… but today, we cel­e­brate a great vic­to­ry for our Con­sti­tu­tion and free­dom of mobil­i­ty!