Teamsters, UFCW file legal challenge seeking to have Costco’s I‑1183 overturned

Two unions that rep­re­sent work­ing fam­i­lies who would be adverse­ly harmed by the imple­men­ta­tion of Cost­co’s Ini­tia­tive 1183 filed suit today in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court seek­ing to have the mea­sure strick­en in its entire­ty as unconstitutional.

Team­sters Local 174 and UFCW Local 21 con­tend that I‑1183 vio­lates Arti­cle II, § 19 of Wash­ing­ton’s Con­sti­tu­tion, which is bet­ter known as the “sin­gle sub­ject” rule. Sec­tion 19 (which applies to all leg­is­la­tion, includ­ing leg­is­la­tion pro­posed by the peo­ple by the cor­po­ra­tions through the ini­tia­tive process, states:

BILL TO CONTAIN ONE SUBJECT. No bill shall embrace more than one sub­ject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

The unions’ thir­teen-page com­plaint (PDF) charges that I‑1183 vio­lates the sin­gle-sub­ject rule in mul­ti­ple instances. As they put it: “I‑1183 is draft­ed such that those vot­ing on it are required to vote for mul­ti­ple sub­jects… in order to obtain approval of an unre­lat­ed sub­ject, the pri­va­ti­za­tion of hard liquor.”

In oth­er words: I‑1183 is a mess. It’s so poor­ly draft­ed, it does­n’t even com­ply with con­sti­tu­tion­al require­ments that spec­i­fy the prop­er form for leg­is­la­tion. That’s what the Team­sters and UFCW are alleging.

“Our democ­ra­cy is threat­ened when one cor­po­ra­tion like Cost­co can write a com­plex ini­tia­tive, pay for the sig­na­tures, pay for the ads that con­trol the debate, all the while avoid­ing dis­cus­sion on the oth­er parts of the pro­pos­al that are the true moti­va­tions by the cor­po­ra­tion in the first place,” said Tom Geiger, UFCW’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, in a state­ment announc­ing the law­suit.

Back­ers of liquor pri­va­tion are sure to cry foul over this law­suit — no doubt some of them will por­tray it as an eleventh hour act of des­per­a­tion by the losers of the most expen­sive fight over a bal­lot mea­sure in state his­to­ry. But it’s actu­al­ly not unusu­al for con­tro­ver­sial ini­tia­tives enact­ed by vot­ers to be chal­lenged in court.

Any­one who is famil­iar with case law sur­round­ing ini­tia­tives in Wash­ing­ton knows that our judi­cia­ry has repeat­ed­ly struck down ini­tia­tives for vio­lat­ing the sin­gle sub­ject rule — includ­ing sev­er­al of Tim Eyman’s.

In its 2000 deci­sion affirm­ing Judge Robert Als­dor­f’s rul­ing declar­ing I‑695 to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, Wash­ing­ton’s Supreme Court offered a rea­son­ably suc­cinct expla­na­tion of why the sin­gle sub­ject rule is important.

There are two dis­tinct pro­hi­bi­tions in Arti­cle II, § 19. The first is that no bill shall embrace more than one sub­ject. The pur­pose of this pro­hi­bi­tion is to pre­vent logrolling or push­ing leg­is­la­tion through by attach­ing it to oth­er leg­is­la­tion. The sec­ond pro­hi­bi­tion is that no bill shall have a sub­ject which is not expressed in its title. The pur­pose of this pro­hi­bi­tion is to noti­fy mem­bers of the Leg­is­la­ture and the pub­lic of the sub­ject mat­ter of the measure.

Rules for statu­to­ry con­struc­tion apply to ini­tia­tives as well as bills, as the courts have made clear. But unlike a bill, a pro­posed ini­tia­tive does not have to go through the leg­isla­tive process, which is delib­er­a­tive and exact­ing by nature.

The leg­isla­tive process sub­jects bills to pub­lic hear­ings, dis­cus­sion and debate in com­mit­tee, then more dis­cus­sion or debate on the House or Sen­ate floor. And then anoth­er round of of all of the above in the Leg­is­la­ture’s oth­er chamber.

Ini­tia­tives, in con­trast, are only min­i­mal­ly reviewed by the code revis­er and the attor­ney gen­er­al’s office, which comes up with the bal­lot title and bal­lot sum­ma­ry. In order to begin cir­cu­lat­ing peti­tions, a spon­sor must final­ize the lan­guage, and after the lan­guage is final­ized, it can’t be changed — mean­ing that there is no fur­ther oppor­tu­ni­ty for improvement.

This is why many ini­tia­tives end up run­ning afoul of the Con­sti­tu­tion: they don’t receive any­where near the same lev­el of scruti­ny that a bill would in the leg­isla­tive process. So cor­rectable flaws are not addressed.

(Oth­er states require more strin­gent review of bal­lot mea­sures. For exam­ple, Utah requires spon­sors to hold a series of pub­lic hear­ings around the state. And Alas­ka requires that an ini­tia­tive be sub­ject to legal review by the state’s Depart­ment of Law before it can move for­ward. We don’t have any such requirements).

Con­sid­er­ing how bad­ly Cost­co want­ed to win (they set a new record for spend­ing on an ini­tia­tive), it’s sur­pris­ing they did­n’t put more effort into draft­ing I‑1183. They unques­tion­ably had the mon­ey to get a sec­ond (and third… and fourth) legal opin­ion. But evi­dent­ly they did­n’t both­er. We can tell by look­ing at I‑1183. It’s full of holes and ambigu­ous lan­guage. It’s a mess, as I said above.

Cost­co was asked by sev­er­al news orga­ni­za­tions to react to the law­suit ear­li­er today, and it had no imme­di­ate com­ment. How­ev­er, the ware­house giant has since released a state­ment attrib­uted to the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee it formed to push pri­va­ti­za­tion (the “Yes on 1183 Coali­tion”) decry­ing the law­suit and com­plain­ing that I‑1183’s oppo­nents aren’t respect­ing the will of the voters.

Cost­co’s objec­tions to this law­suit are ground­less. If Cost­co tru­ly cared about the will of the vot­ers, why did­n’t its exec­u­tives just admit defeat after they lost last year (when vot­ers reject­ed not one, but two liquor pri­va­ti­za­tion ini­tia­tives), move on, and let the issue be set­tled? Because obvi­ous­ly they were deter­mined to get what they want­ed. They viewed I‑1100’s fail­ure as a tem­po­rary set­back — tak­ing a page from Tim Eyman’s play­book — and came right back with I‑1183.

They are hard­ly in a posi­tion to crit­i­cize UFCW and the Team­sters for con­tin­u­ing to fight on to pro­tect their mem­bers’ liveli­hoods after los­ing the elec­tion. Espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that they went to court them­selves a few years ago to try to get state laws gov­ern­ing beer and wine sales over­turned (they lost, after many appeals).

We at NPI applaud the fil­ing of this law­suit and we hope it is suc­cess­ful. Aside from the destruc­tive ram­i­fi­ca­tions it has for pub­lic health and pub­lic safe­ty (increased avail­abil­i­ty of hard liquor equals increased con­sump­tion, which trans­lates to more drunk-dri­ving and oth­er crimes involv­ing alco­hol), I‑1183 is a giant rip-off.

I’ll let Kei­th Barnes, the pro­pri­etor of Bain­bridge Organ­ic Dis­tillers, explain — because he’s real­ly put some thought into ana­lyz­ing this.

While it is not usu­al­ly described as such, I con­sid­er Wash­ing­ton State’s liquor busi­ness a state asset.

The busi­ness unit dri­ves rev­enue, col­lects tax­es, secures prod­ucts from man­u­fac­tur­ers, has employ­ees, man­ages retail­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion and makes prof­its just like every busi­ness hopes to do, with the key dif­fer­ence that the prof­its from the busi­ness go into the state’s fund instead of into the accounts of a pri­vate enter­prise. This makes every res­i­dent in Wash­ing­ton State a de fac­to stake­hold­er in the busi­ness, as all prof­its are used to fund vital state services.

If the WSLCB [Wash­ing­ton State Liquor Con­trol Board] were pri­vate­ly owned and want­ed to sell off its liquor busi­ness, it would place a val­ue on that busi­ness in the accept­ed man­ner – a mul­ti­ple of earn­ings over a num­ber of years with debt and hard assets fig­ured in. Under I‑1183, the state is expect­ed to sim­ply walk away from the free-stand­ing busi­ness enter­prise that it has spent sev­en­ty-sev­en years build­ing, one that makes con­sis­tent­ly high prof­its that ben­e­fit all stake­hold­er-res­i­dents, while effec­tive­ly man­ag­ing the pub­lic safe­ty con­cerns around alco­hol with­in the top five per­cent in the nation.

If a cabal of tim­ber com­pa­nies includ­ing Plum Creek Tim­ber, Wey­er­haeuser, Tem­ple-Inland and Mead­West­va­co were try­ing to take over state owned tim­ber­lands, and decid­ing amongst them­selves where they were going to cut tim­ber and who was to prof­it most by exploit­ing these state-owned assets, res­i­dents would not stand for it. Like­wise, if a coali­tion includ­ing Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Roy­al Dutch Shell were try­ing to take over con­trol of state owned oil and min­er­al rights and devis­ing their own extrac­tion and prof­it plan there would be demon­stra­tions in the streets.

Barnes con­cludes:

To walk away from this busi­ness, and to hand over the liquor con­ces­sion in Wash­ing­ton State to pri­vate busi­ness­es, with­out due com­pen­sa­tion to state res­i­dents, is not in the best inter­ests of Wash­ing­ton State or its stake­hold­er-res­i­dents. If it is the desire of the res­i­dents of Wash­ing­ton State that the state exit the liquor busi­ness it should do so on its own terms, and to the ben­e­fit of the stakeholder/residents.

By meek­ly allow­ing itself to be forced out of busi­ness with­out being com­pen­sat­ed for the val­ue of the liquor con­ces­sion the state would not be liv­ing up to its respon­si­bil­i­ty to always work in the best inter­ests of the state’s residents.

I‑1183 is a raw deal, pure and sim­ple. It’s bad for tax­pay­ers, bad for work­ing fam­i­lies, bad for first respon­ders, and bad for our communities.

It’s unfor­tu­nate that the cam­paign against I‑1183 (Pro­tect Our Com­mu­ni­ties) was unable to effec­tive­ly counter Cost­co’s decep­tive ad campaign.

But the bat­tle is not over. UFCW and the Team­sters are pru­dent­ly car­ry­ing on the fight against I‑1183 in the legal are­na, tak­ing a stand not only for their mem­bers, but for the well-being of all Washingtonians.

We are grate­ful to them for not giv­ing up. As we have seen, the right wing does­n’t throw in the tow­el when it los­es — and nei­ther should we.