This morn­ing, Tim Eyman and his cohorts from Spokane, the Fagans, showed up in Olympia at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex to deliv­er box­es of peti­tions for Eyman’s lat­est scheme to wreck gov­ern­ment — Ini­tia­tive 1125, which would inter­fere with WSDOT’s abil­i­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete the new Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge over Lake Wash­ing­ton and with Sound Tran­sit’s abil­i­ty to bring East Link light rail to Mer­cer Island, Belle­vue, and Redmond.

Tim Eyman and the Fagans stand in front of their prized white­board at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex in Olympia (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

After haul­ing in their box­es of peti­tions, Eyman and the Fagans propped up a white­board in the room where the Sec­re­tary of State was pro­cess­ing the peti­tions and pro­ceed­ed to hold a press con­fer­ence. (Iron­i­cal­ly, by doing so, Eyman dis­rupt­ed the pro­cess­ing of his own peti­tions, because the Sec­re­tary of State’s vis­i­bly annoyed elec­tions staff even­tu­al­ly told him they could­n’t count while he was talk­ing in front of a half-dozen tele­vi­sion and still cameras.)

Eyman began by attack­ing Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire and state law­mak­ers for del­e­gat­ing author­i­ty for rais­ing fees to agen­cies, com­mis­sions, and uni­ver­si­ties, ignor­ing the fact that his own ini­tia­tive has, in many cas­es, neces­si­tat­ed such del­e­ga­tion in the first place.

Ini­tia­tive 1053, like its pre­de­ces­sor Ini­tia­tive 960, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pre­vents the House and Sen­ate from demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly vot­ing to raise rev­enue to fund vital ser­vices. Con­se­quent­ly, law­mak­ers can’t decide whether to make cuts or not.

Instead, they can only decide where to make cuts. Since our uni­ver­si­ties would­n’t be able to func­tion if they could­n’t hire fac­ul­ty and sched­ule class­es, the Leg­is­la­ture reluc­tant­ly decid­ed to grant tuition set­ting author­i­ty to uni­ver­si­ty regents.

I‑1053 put them in a bind, and they attempt­ed to make the best of a bad sit­u­a­tion. How iron­ic that Eyman is now attack­ing them for strug­gling to deal with the con­se­quences of his own ille­git­i­mate initiative.

To Eyman, we say: This is what hap­pens when you mess with rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy and stop it from work­ing like it is sup­posed to. Our founders gave us a plan of gov­ern­ment built on major­i­ty rule with minor­i­ty rights; I‑1053 has tak­en away major­i­ty rule and sab­o­taged the sys­tem our Con­sti­tu­tion created.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Eyman him­self is more unac­count­able than any of the peo­ple he crit­i­cizes. He’s in a posi­tion where, backed by his wealthy bene­fac­tors, he can throw mon­key wrench­es into the gears of our democ­ra­cy, then sit back and yell, “You’re doing it wrong!” He has nev­er had to deal with the con­se­quences of his ini­tia­tives. He’s nev­er had to write a bud­get. And when he is asked by reporters what he would do if he were in charge, he nev­er answers. He is in the busi­ness of putting oth­er peo­ple in impos­si­ble posi­tions and then fol­low­ing up by tight­en­ing the screws.

Eyman often says we should debate his ideas, and not him. He claims to just be a mes­sen­ger. He said it again today at his press con­fer­ence. But whose mes­sen­ger is he? BP’s? Michael Dun­mire’s? Kem­per Free­man Jr.‘s?

The truth is, Eyman is no peo­ple’s ombuds­man. He serves the inter­ests of his wealthy bene­fac­tors, not the pub­lic inter­est. And he injects him­self into the debate over his ini­tia­tives. Observe that he does­n’t just force pub­lic votes on bad ideas. He uses his gift for media manip­u­la­tion to dis­tort the debate so it will be his fram­ing that gets pre­sent­ed. His objec­tive is to try to dupe voters.

He has no ground to stand upon, there­fore, when he wrong­ly says that we are only crit­i­ciz­ing him because there’s noth­ing in his schemes that is wor­thy of crit­i­cism. We’re crit­i­ciz­ing him because he’s try­ing to con the peo­ple of this state, and every time he suc­ceeds, our qual­i­ty of life takes a hit.

Ini­tia­tive 1125 does not have the far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions that Ini­tia­tive 1053 does. But that does­n’t mean it isn’t a threat. State Trea­sur­er Jim McIn­tire has warned that I‑1125 could jeop­ar­dize the com­ple­tion of the new Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge and pos­si­bly oth­er projects as well.

Law­mak­ers have told NPI the same thing.

After Eyman was done denounc­ing Gre­goire and state law­mak­ers, reporters turned their atten­tion to for­mer state Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Doug Mac­Don­ald, who author­i­ta­tive­ly rebutted Eyman’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for many of the pro­vi­sions con­tained in his ini­tia­tive. For instance, when Mac­Don­ald was asked why it’s not a good idea to require that toll mon­ey col­lect­ed at a par­tic­u­lar facil­i­ty be spent only on the improve­ment of that facil­i­ty, he said:

Very few peo­ple dri­ve on one project. If you take 405, very few peo­ple drop on a heli­copter at one end of 405 and drop off at the oth­er. They start in Auburn on 167, or they get over on 522. And as we look at how roads work togeth­er, we have to fig­ure out how sys­tems for tolling… actu­al­ly work, so that both the mon­ey and the things that the mon­ey can build are spread intel­li­gent­ly around the whole system.

And, when asked whether tolling I‑90 in addi­tion to SR 520 would cause busi­ness­es in Belle­vue to lose cus­tomers, Mac­Don­ald reflect­ed, “Tolls have proven around the coun­try not to defeat the pur­pos­es of com­merce, but to build the facil­i­ties that allow peo­ple to shop, allow peo­ple to work.”

He’s absolute­ly cor­rect on this score. Busi­ness­es in Belle­vue would cer­tain­ly have few­er Seat­tle cus­tomers if the three float­ing bridges we’ve built over Lake Wash­ing­ton did­n’t exist at all. Peo­ple would have to dri­ve all the way around the lake — or take a fer­ry — to eas­i­ly move between the East­side and the west side.

Mac­Don­ald also promised reporters that they would see a vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion cam­paign come togeth­er in the ensu­ing weeks and months to defeat I‑1125.

We at NPI will do our part to ensure that NO on I‑1125 is suc­cess­ful. As we said in our state­ment in response to Eyman’s sub­mis­sion of sig­na­tures, this mea­sure is only on the bal­lot because one wealthy guy want­ed it to be. Peo­ple are hard­ly clam­or­ing for what Eyman is sell­ing. If vot­ers under­stand the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of this ill-con­ceived scheme, they’ll resound­ing­ly reject it.