Join the coalition opposing I‑1366 — Tim Eyman’s most destructive initiative yet

This Novem­ber, in addi­tion to choos­ing lead­ers at the city, coun­ty, and port lev­el, Wash­ing­to­ni­ans will very like­ly be decid­ing the fate of the most destruc­tive ini­tia­tive that Tim Eyman has ever pro­posed: Ini­tia­tive 1366.

I‑1366 is a clone of last year’s I‑1325, which failed to make the bal­lot because Eyman was­n’t able to find wealthy bene­fac­tors will­ing to under­write it.

I‑1366 would slash the state sales tax by about 13%, rob­bing our state trea­sury of around $1 bil­lion (that’s bil­lion, with a b) a year in rev­enue if the Leg­is­la­ture does­n’t pass a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment requir­ing a two-thirds vote to raise rev­enue. Pos­si­bly inspired by the 2013 gov­ern­ment shut­down, it’s Ted Cruz-style blackmail.

Eyman is now try­ing again, and this time (pos­si­bly thanks to the help of sev­er­al Repub­li­can state sen­a­tors) he has big mon­ey lined up, which means he should be able to buy his way onto the bal­lot. A hand­ful of very rich right wing donors has so far sup­plied over three quar­ters of a mil­lion dol­lars for Eyman’s cam­paign cof­fers, and Eyman has spent about that much on paid sig­na­ture gath­er­ing, through his asso­ciates Roy Ruffi­no and Eddie Agazarm.

Includ­ing $250,000 in loans that he has tak­en out against his home (which he will prob­a­bly find mon­ey to repay, as he has in the past), Eyman has accu­mu­lat­ed over $1.1 mil­lion to date for I‑1366. That total will prob­a­bly go up when Eyman’s trea­sur­er uploads PDC reports for the cur­rent month of May.

With I‑1366 des­tined for the bal­lot, the team at NPI is work­ing to build a coali­tion to fight the ini­tia­tive so that it receives the fierce, vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion it deserves, like we did two years ago with I‑517, Eyman’s self-serv­ing ini­tia­tive on initiatives.

We already have a num­ber of great part­ners. The King Coun­ty Democ­rats and TaxSan­i­ty were the first to sign up, and the list oppos­ing I‑1366 now also includes the League of Women Vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton, Fuse Wash­ing­ton, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, and many local Demo­c­ra­t­ic organizations.

But we’re look­ing for more. We want the biggest, broad­est coali­tion pos­si­ble work­ing to defeat I‑1366. Read­ers, if you are involved with one or more orga­ni­za­tions that cares about effec­tive gov­ern­ment, ful­ly fund­ing our pub­lic schools, fix­ing our bro­ken tax code, and uphold­ing our state Con­sti­tu­tion, please ask those orga­ni­za­tions to join our cause as soon as they pos­si­bly can.

To make things easy, we’ve got a mod­el res­o­lu­tion you can pro­vide to the boards or gov­ern­ing bod­ies of orga­ni­za­tions you work with. This mod­el res­o­lu­tion can be tweaked or adapt­ed as desired, but it’s also well-pol­ished and can be adapt­ed as is once an orga­ni­za­tion has added its name to the There­fore clauses.

After an orga­ni­za­tion you work with has tak­en a posi­tion, it’s impor­tant they let us know by fill­ing out the form on the NO on I‑1366 web­site so we can update the list of orga­ni­za­tions that are opposed to Eyman’s dia­bol­i­cal plot force law­mak­ers to choose between sab­o­tag­ing our state Con­sti­tu­tion or blow­ing a mas­sive hole in the state bud­get. The loss of $1 bil­lion a year in state sales tax rev­enue would destroy the lit­tle progress that’s been made to date towards McCleary com­pli­ance and cre­at­ing an even big­ger school fund­ing deficit.

Like I‑517 and I‑1125/I‑1033/I‑985 before it, I‑1366 is beat­able, but only if those of us who care about Wash­ing­ton’s val­ues and Wash­ing­ton’s future come togeth­er to stand up to the extrem­ism of Tim Eyman and his wealthy benefactors.

Take a stand against I‑1366 today, and join the effort to send this uncon­scionable ini­tia­tive to the polit­i­cal grave­yard that it belongs in.