Tim Eyman’s lawsuit over I‑1185 fiscal impact “dimissed in full and with prejudice”

A base­less law­suit filed by Tim Eyman against the state’s Office of Finan­cial Man­age­ment (OFM) has been dis­missed in full and with prej­u­dice fol­low­ing a hear­ing in Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court ear­li­er today.

After lis­ten­ing to argu­ments by Senior Coun­sel Steve Diet­rich (rep­re­sent­ing the state) and Tim Eyman (who appeared pro se), Judge James Dixon signed an order pre­sent­ed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rob McKen­na dis­miss­ing the case in its entire­ty. His deci­sion means that Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed’s office can move for­ward with the print­ing of the voter’s pam­phlet for the Novem­ber gen­er­al election.

Eyman had peti­tioned the court to force OFM to rewrite its fis­cal impact state­ment for Ini­tia­tive 1185, his lat­est attempt to reim­pose his uncon­sti­tu­tion­al scheme that pre­vents the Leg­is­la­ture from rais­ing rev­enue with­out a two-thirds vote.

But Judge Dixon found his com­plaint to be with­out merit.

Eyman filed his suit because he was unhap­py that the fis­cal impact state­ment for I‑1185 did not match the one OFM pub­lished two years ago for I‑1053. Eyman con­tend­ed that OFM should have sim­ply re-issued the doc­u­ment it pub­lished two sum­mers ago with a cou­ple of minor word changes. But, as we explained ear­li­er this week, there’s a very good rea­son why OFM did­n’t do that:

OFM has a duty to the peo­ple and the elect­ed lead­ers of Wash­ing­ton State to accu­rate­ly iden­ti­fy and describe fis­cal impacts of pro­posed initiatives.

In 2010, pri­or to the adop­tion of Ini­tia­tive 1053, the agency deter­mined that enact­ment of I‑1053 would not have a direct fis­cal impact. At the time, I‑1053 was not law, so OFM was mak­ing an edu­cat­ed guess about the initiative.

As it turned out, the fee pro­vi­sion of I‑1053 (which was not present in I‑1053′s pre­de­ces­sor, I‑960) did have a direct fis­cal impact, so OFM appro­pri­ate­ly took that into account when prepar­ing the fis­cal impact state­ment for I‑1185.

Tim Eyman is now ask­ing a court to force OFM to not account for its pri­or mis­take – in oth­er words, to not make use of what it has learned about I‑1053 since I‑1053 went into effect – because he does not want the truth about the con­se­quences of I‑1053′s clone I‑1185 to be known and to be discussed.

Eyman’s law­suit is com­plete­ly with­out mer­it. OFM has not com­mit­ted any wrong­do­ing. The agency should not be com­pelled to reis­sue its fis­cal impact state­ment for I‑1185 sim­ply because Tim Eyman doesn’t like it.

Eyman, who loves to orches­trate pub­lic­i­ty stunts to attract news cov­er­age, tried to dress the part of a lawyer and sound lawyer-like. He opt­ed for a suit and tie and report­ed­ly did his best to put on a show for the cam­eras with­out break­ing deco­rum. But it was all for naught. His request to pre­vent OFM’s fis­cal impact state­ment from being pub­lished in the voter’s pam­phlet was denied.

Amus­ing­ly, he appeared uncon­cerned about the demise of his case after it was dis­missed, despite hav­ing fret­ted in his legal plead­ing that OFM’s fis­cal impact state­ment would under­cut his abil­i­ty to sell I‑1185 to voters.

Eyman claimed after­ward that he was rep­re­sent­ing him­self because he had antic­i­pat­ed he’d lose and did­n’t want to have to foot a $6,000 bill for hav­ing an attor­ney appear on his behalf. But $6,000 is chump change con­sid­er­ing how much mon­ey pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions have ponied up for I‑1185. Why was Eyman unwill­ing to spend any of his oil or beer mon­ey pur­su­ing this case?

Maybe it’s because this real­ly was just anoth­er pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

POSTSCRIPT: Brad Shan­non and Jim Cam­den have more.