Tim Eyman gets an earful in Seattle after stepping to the mic to recite his talking points

Ini­tia­tive prof­i­teer Tim Eyman got a taste of what it’s like to be inter­rupt­ed and heck­led tonight when he showed up in Seat­tle to speak at the sec­ond to last stop on Rod­ney Tom and Cur­tis King’s trans­porta­tion autumn “lis­ten­ing tour”, which has been trav­el­ing around the state since mid-September.

Eyman, who was also at the Everett stop a cou­ple of weeks ago, came pre­pared with a set of provoca­tive talk­ing points to recite. When his name was called late in the third hour, he got up from his seat and walked to the cen­ter aisle as whis­pers filled the sanc­tu­ary of the First Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Seattle.

“Did he just say Tim Eyman?” some­one near me asked. “Yep,” I replied. “Tim’s here, and when he speaks this room is going to get much noisier.”

And, sure enough, a few min­utes lat­er, Eyman stepped to the micro­phone, and the fun times began. Any­one who was snooz­ing in their seat was jolt­ed awake.

“My name is, uh, Tim Eyman,” Eyman began. I think he then tried to say that he was from Muk­il­teo, but that got drowned out by the loud cho­rus of boos and jeers that imme­di­ate­ly filled the room. The Repub­li­cans up at the front of the room smiled weak­ly or looked grim. The Democ­rats seemed amused.

“You’re a joke!” yelled one audi­ence member.

Unde­terred, Eyman went on.

“The peo­ple attend­ing these meet­ings, includ­ing myself, are not a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of the tax­pay­ers of Wash­ing­ton,” Eyman said, instant­ly draw­ing anoth­er round of boos and jeers. “Nor­mal peo­ple are at home recov­er­ing from a long day at work, but their voic­es deserve to be heard too,” he added.

“We’re nor­mal peo­ple!” shout­ed sev­er­al indig­nant audi­ence mem­bers in a near simul­ta­ne­ous (but unco­or­di­nat­ed) reply. “I came here straight from work,” one young woman sit­ting near me said loudly.

Peo­ple in the room were offend­ed, and cer­tain­ly they had every right to be.

Were I not an activist who has been watch­dog­ging Tim Eyman and fight­ing his destruc­tive ini­tia­tives for over a decade, I would have been offend­ed too. I’d have resent­ed Eyman’s sneer­ing impli­ca­tion that I was not a “nor­mal” per­son because I had cho­sen to give up part of my evening to share my oppo­si­tion to Metro ser­vice cuts with the peo­ple charged with decid­ing what our laws and bud­get should be.

But I’ve heard Eyman give tes­ti­mo­ny so many times that I know what to expect. Con­de­scen­sion is part and par­cel of Eyman’s schtick. He can be dis­arm­ing in per­son, but when he’s got an audi­ence, he is con­sis­tent­ly rude and dis­re­spect­ful. It’s sad. He does­n’t care about being on top­ic; he only cares about stuff­ing as much dis­hon­est anti-gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da as he can into two minutes.

As far as I’m con­cerned, nor­mal peo­ple are peo­ple who are civic-mind­ed and make an effort to vote, show up to jury duty, and par­tic­i­pate in pol­i­tics. Apa­thy or dis­in­ter­est in pub­lic affairs is not nor­mal or healthy in a democ­ra­cy —  it’s dangerous.

Eyman may not be nor­mal — after all, he’s a well paid pro­fes­sion­al politi­cian — but plen­ty of peo­ple who showed up at tonight’s hear­ing are reg­u­lar Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who claim to rep­re­sent nobody but them­selves. They spoke as cit­i­zens and activists, not lob­by­ists or polit­i­cal oper­a­tives. Unlike Eyman, they don’t get paid big bucks to pro­mote cyn­i­cal ini­tia­tives designed to wreck government.

Every per­son in this coun­try should be an activist. Activism is nor­mal. What is not nor­mal is pas­sivism. I used to be a pas­sivist, but then I saw the dam­age that Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tives were doing to my com­mu­ni­ty, and I decid­ed I could not sit on the side­lines any longer. I became an activist. Eleven and a half years lat­er, I still am.

After insult­ing the oth­er peo­ple in the room, Eyman pro­ceed­ed to heap praise on Rod­ney Tom, Tim Shel­don, and the oth­er Sen­ate Repub­li­cans for not hav­ing vot­ed to raise rev­enue to fund vital trans­porta­tion improvements.

He then deployed one of his favorite catch­phras­es, also embla­zoned on his t‑shirt: Let the vot­ers decide. Eyman uses this one a lot because it is sim­ple and appeal­ing. What could be more demo­c­ra­t­ic than let­ting the vot­ers decide, after all? 

But Eyman is no pop­ulist. He’s a pre­tender. He mere­ly employs pop­ulist rhetoric to dis­guise his extreme, anti-gov­ern­ment views. Like his idol Grover Norquist, he is opposed to rais­ing or even recov­er­ing rev­enue under any cir­cum­stances. When law­mak­ers do put a levy or an infra­struc­ture fund­ing pack­age on the bal­lot, Eyman oppos­es it. If it affects him, he can be count­ed on to cam­paign against it.

In fact, I’m not aware of any instance where Tim Eyman has sup­port­ed a bal­lot mea­sure — let alone a bill in the Leg­is­la­ture — that would raise revenue.

(Tim, if I’m wrong on this, feel free to leave a com­ment and tell us which levy or levies you’ve vot­ed in favor of, or urged oth­ers to vote for).

So it is disin­gen­u­ous for Eyman to say Let the vot­ers decide, since he is not real­ly for let­ting the vot­ers decide. The only pub­lic votes that mat­ter to him are the pub­lic votes he can cite to but­tress his anti-gov­ern­ment talk­ing points.

What Eyman *is* for is destroy­ing our vital pub­lic ser­vices. Drown­ing gov­ern­ment in a bath­tub, in the infa­mous words of Grover Norquist.

That is why, over the span of a decade, he has spon­sored more than a dozen ini­tia­tives to slash tax­es or put bud­get­ing and rev­enue deci­sions in the hands of his anti-tax friends in the Leg­is­la­ture… even when they are not in the majority.

Most of these ini­tia­tives have been defeat­ed by vot­ers or struck down by the courts because they were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. But again, Eyman does­n’t like to talk about his defeats. He only talks about the times when vot­ers have backed his posi­tion. He presents a very dis­tort­ed and warped view of past events. He did it again tonight when he recount­ed the fate of two of his ear­li­est initiatives.

In 1999, Ini­tia­tive 695 set car tabs at thir­ty dol­lars per year… it was over­whelm­ing­ly approved. Then-Gov­er­nor Gary Locke [lat­er] said thir­ty dol­lar license tabs are here to stay.

In 2002, Ini­tia­tive 776 again set car tabs at $30 a year, and it was over­whelm­ing­ly approved.

As usu­al, Eyman was fib­bing. Here is what real­ly hap­pened all those years ago.

In 1999, Tim Eyman spon­sored I‑695. I‑695 tried to do two things: repeal the statewide motor vehi­cle excise tax — which main­ly fund­ed roads, fer­ries, and tran­sit — and require that future increas­es in rev­enue be sub­ject to a pub­lic vote. I‑695 passed statewide, but not over­whelm­ing­ly. It failed in King County.

The next year, the courts struck down I‑695 as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it vio­lat­ed the sin­gle-sub­ject rule. The Leg­is­la­ture then unwise­ly decid­ed, at Gary Lock­e’s urg­ing, to repeal the MVET, which to this day remains a very cost­ly mistake.

How­ev­er, it left local MVETs in place at the local lev­el, which meant that most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans con­tin­ued to pay more than $30 in annu­al vehi­cle fees.

In 2002, Tim Eyman spon­sored I‑776, which he nick­named “Son of 695”. I‑776 sought to repeal those local motor vehi­cle excise tax­es that the Leg­is­la­ture had left in place. As of 2002, four coun­ties (King, Sno­homish, Pierce, and Dou­glas) col­lect­ed MVETs, along with Sound Tran­sit. Eyman’s pri­ma­ry goal with I‑776 was to rob Sound Tran­sit of one of its rev­enue sources, thus mak­ing it impos­si­ble for the agency to move for­ward with plans to build a region­al light rail system.

I‑776 was the first Eyman ini­tia­tive I was involved in fight­ing. Sad­ly, in Novem­ber 2002, I‑776 nar­row­ly passed statewide. How­ev­er, it failed in King Coun­ty and in Sound Tran­sit’s juris­dic­tion. The courts lat­er ruled that because Sound Tran­sit had pledged the rev­enue it was col­lect­ing from the MVET to bonds it had sold to finance light rail con­struc­tion, the MVET had to con­tin­ue to be col­lect­ed. And it was. Cen­tral Link broke ground in 2003 and opened to strong rid­er­ship six years later.

So, just to recap: Nei­ther of Tim Eyman’s “thir­ty dol­lar car tab” ini­tia­tives actu­al­ly set vehi­cle fees at thir­ty dol­lars across Wash­ing­ton. Nei­ther passed over­whelm­ing­ly. And nei­ther was approved in King Coun­ty, the locale of tonight’s trans­porta­tion lis­ten­ing tour, and the area rep­re­sent­ed by most of the law­mak­ers present.

Con­trary to what Eyman said, vehi­cle fees are not “radioac­tive”, nor is the motor vehi­cle excise tax a “cor­rupt tax”. Eyman made a name for him­self try­ing to repeal vehi­cle fees, so it’s no sur­prise that he is strong­ly opposed to the Leg­is­la­ture rein­stat­ing vehi­cle fees to pay for fer­ries, roads, and transit.

The old MVET cer­tain­ly had prob­lems, but it should have been reformed, not repealed. The loss of the rev­enue the MVET pro­vid­ed has left us in bad shape. If the 2000 Leg­is­la­ture had­n’t been so short­sight­ed, our needs now would not be so great. Vehi­cle fees should be raised as part of a new trans­porta­tion pack­age, so we’re not just rely­ing on an increase in the gas tax to pay for projects and services.

After Eyman’s time had expired, an irri­tat­ed Cur­tis King admon­ished the audi­ence for repeat­ed­ly inter­rupt­ing Eyman with boos and jeers. While I would agree that the audi­ence was­n’t respect­ful of Eyman’s time, they were only giv­ing Eyman a taste of what it’s like to be treat­ed rude­ly. Peo­ple are jus­ti­fi­ably sick and tired of Tim Eyman’s tox­ic pol­i­tics and his destruc­tive initiatives.

Peo­ple in King Coun­ty are espe­cial­ly fed up. King Coun­ty is a place where progress and pub­lic invest­ment is val­ued, and where inter­de­pen­dence is acknowl­edged and appre­ci­at­ed. We are all in this togeth­er. We can do more for our­selves when we pool our resources to get things done. That’s why near­ly every per­son tes­ti­fy­ing besides Tim Eyman urged law­mak­ers to go back to Olympia, ham­mer out a trans­porta­tion pack­age that is mul­ti­modal, not auto-cen­tric, and enact it into law.