PDC to investigate Tim Eyman, associates for violating our public disclosure laws (again!)

Wash­ing­ton State’s Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion will inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions that Tim Eyman and his asso­ciates failed to time­ly reg­is­ter a com­mit­tee for Ini­tia­tive 517 and failed to time­ly report con­tri­bu­tions and expen­di­tures for the I‑517 cam­paign, its Direc­tor of Com­pli­ance said this week.

I‑517 is an ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture that would:

• dou­ble the length of time that ini­tia­tive spon­sors have to gath­er sig­na­tures for ini­tia­tives to the people;
• dubi­ous­ly require that cities and coun­ties put ini­tia­tives up for a vote even if they exceed the scope of the local ini­tia­tive power,
• and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly infringe on the First Amend­ment rights of ini­tia­tive oppo­nents by attempt­ing to crim­i­nal­ize decline-to-sign activities.

Eyman began qui­et­ly work­ing on I‑517 a year ago with his asso­ciates Roy Ruffi­no and Eddie Agazarm, who run a peti­tion­ing busi­ness called “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions” that has repeat­ed­ly run afoul of Wash­ing­ton State’s work­er pro­tec­tion laws (Eddie and Roy were audit­ed and fined by the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries in 2011 for this rea­son). The trio and their oth­er asso­ciates failed to time­ly reg­is­ter a polit­i­cal com­mit­tee for I‑517 with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion and then failed to time­ly report the com­mit­tee’s con­tri­bu­tions and expenditures.

This prompt­ed Taco­ma activist and fel­low Eyman watch­dog Sher­ry Bock­winkel (who used to run a sig­na­ture gath­er­ing firm her­self) to file a com­plaint with the PDC against Eyman and his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry last August.

Up until this week, the com­plaint had been in lim­bo. But on Tues­day, the PDC’s Philip Stutz­man for­mal­ly acknowl­edged that it had been received, and that PDC staff would be con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. The case num­ber is 13–027.

Phil’s let­ter began as follows:

Dear Ms. Bockwinkel:

The Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC) received a com­plaint from you on August 21, 20112, alleg­ing that the Pro­tect Your Right to Vote on Ini­tia­tives polit­i­cal com­mit­tee (PRVI) vio­lat­ed RCW 42.17A.205 by fail­ing to time­ly reg­is­ter its cam­paign in sup­port of Ini­tia­tive 517 to the leg­is­la­ture, and vio­lat­ed RCW 42.17A.235 and RCW 42.17A.240 by fail­ing to file time­ly, accu­rate reports of con­tri­bu­tions and expen­di­tures. On August 29, 2012, you pro­vid­ed sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to your allegations.

PDC staff will inves­ti­gate these alle­ga­tions and noti­fy you of the results when the inves­ti­ga­tion is com­plete. All laws cit­ed in this let­ter can be found on our web­site, under “Home” and “Laws and Rules.”

It’s a relief to know that the PDC is going to take action and inves­ti­gate Sher­ry’s com­plaint. It should not have tak­en sev­en months for them to send a let­ter say­ing they’re open­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. Of course, the PDC is a pub­lic ser­vice, and like most of our state’s oth­er pub­lic ser­vices, it is underfunded.

(If the PDC had more staff and a big­ger bud­get, it could be more nim­ble and respon­sive, and redesign its web­site to be more acces­si­ble and reli­able using new­er tech­nolo­gies. But that’s a sub­ject for anoth­er post).

Tim Eyman may think that he is above the law (and above our state Con­sti­tu­tion), but he is not. Cit­i­zen­ship comes with respon­si­bil­i­ties as well as rights. If Eyman wish­es to exer­cise his right as a cit­i­zen to spon­sor ini­tia­tives (even uncon­sti­tu­tion­al ones) then he needs to file his C1-PCs, C4s, and C3s on time.

Eyman has been in busi­ness with his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry for over ten years; he should be very famil­iar with the law by now and be in full com­pli­ance all of the time.

But he has not been. His his­to­ry of delin­quent report­ing and will­ful igno­rance of our pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws demon­strates that he does not care about the peo­ple’s right to know who is try­ing to influ­ence their votes dur­ing elec­tion sea­son or get their sig­na­tures dur­ing a sig­na­ture drive.

And speak­ing of sig­na­ture dri­ves, the PDC’s deci­sion to act on this com­plaint comes just a few weeks after after a probe by the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Divi­sion found thou­sands of appar­ent­ly fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures on I‑517 peti­tions.

The mat­ter has since been turned over to the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol for inves­ti­ga­tion and poten­tial refer­ral for prosecution.

The fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures we know about were sub­mit­ted by three sig­na­ture gath­er­ers who also worked on the cam­paign to qual­i­fy I‑522, and then turned in to Eyman and his asso­ciates, who evi­dent­ly did not both­er to con­duct checks of their own peti­tion sheets pri­or to turn­ing them over to the Elec­tions Division.

We hope that the PDC and State Patrol’s inves­ti­ga­tions will be thor­ough and will have reper­cus­sions. Tim Eyman and his asso­ciates need to be held account­able for the sketchy, shady cam­paign that they ran last year to qual­i­fy I‑517. Allow­ing their law­break­ing to go unpun­ished would set a bad precedent.