Tim Eyman’s paid signature drive for I‑1366 is done — so why is he still fundraising for it?

For the past four days, ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman has been send­ing out dai­ly emails ask­ing his fol­low­ers to give gen­er­ous­ly so he can make a final pay­ment to his asso­ciates to fin­ish the sig­na­ture dri­ve for Ini­tia­tive 1366, his lat­est attempt to sab­o­tage Wash­ing­ton’s cher­ished tra­di­tion of major­i­ty rule.

I‑1366, as reg­u­lar read­ers will recall, is a do-over of last year’s I‑1325, which did­n’t qual­i­fy. It would slash the state sales tax by next April, result­ing in the loss of about $1 bil­lion a year, unless, by that time, the Leg­is­la­ture has passed a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment per­ma­nent­ly requir­ing a two-thirds vote to raise revenue.

“It’s crunch time — ini­tia­tives don’t qual­i­fy unless there’s a big surge in dona­tions and sig­na­tures at the end,” Eyman declared in an email sent Mon­day, June 22nd.

“We are ago­niz­ing­ly close to qual­i­fy­ing,” he added. “We just need every­one to help raise the mon­ey nec­es­sary to col­lect the required sig­na­tures. We’ve worked too hard and invest­ed too much to fall short now. Please help us make it happen.”

The next day, June 23rd, Eyman was more explic­it in his appeal for money.

“On day one, I took out a 2nd mort­gage on my home and loaned the cam­paign $150,000,” Eyman wrote in his Tues­day email.

“Why? So we could imme­di­ate­ly con­tract with a pro­fes­sion­al sig­na­ture gath­er­ing firm to sup­ple­ment our vol­un­teers. For months, they’ve been out there ask­ing vot­ers through­out the state to sign peti­tions for I‑1366. Our final pay­ment of $100,000 for their ser­vices is due one week from tomor­row — on July 1st.”

Yes­ter­day and today, Eyman sent fol­low-up emails thank­ing six fol­low­ers who have stepped for­ward to answer his call — and plead­ing for more fol­low­ers to do likewise.

What’s miss­ing from all of these Eyman emails is the truth about the I‑1366 sig­na­ture dri­ve. By com­par­ing what Eyman is say­ing with Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion data and the field intel­li­gence we’ve gath­ered, we can see the details he’s con­ve­nient­ly leav­ing out. And sad­ly, the evi­dence demon­strates that Eyman is once again dup­ing his own fol­low­ers — pre­sum­ably for per­son­al profit.

Here is what we know about the I‑1366 sig­na­ture dri­ve, its costs, and its timeframe:

• In Feb­ru­ary, Eyman announced that he was tak­ing out a sec­ond mort­gage on his house to “jump­start” a sig­na­ture dri­ve for I‑1366.
• Not long after, we began receiv­ing reports of peti­tion­ers col­lect­ing sig­na­tures for the ini­tia­tive. For about the first six weeks of the dri­ve, com­pen­sa­tion was sev­en­ty-five cents per sig­na­ture, which isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly high.
• In March, Eyman’s trea­sur­er filed reports with the PDC show­ing the loan, ini­tial pay­ments to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, and a big infu­sion of cash from a new wealthy bene­fac­tor, Clyde Hol­land, and an old one, Kem­per Free­man Jr.
• In April, a sec­ond round of reports showed anoth­er mas­sive infu­sion of cash, with anoth­er big check from Hol­land account­ing for much of that. Six weeks into the dri­ve, peti­tion­ers began receiv­ing com­pen­sa­tion of $1.25 per sig­na­ture, up from sev­en­ty-five cents.
• In May, a third round of reports revealed that Eyman had raised near­ly a mil­lion dol­lars for I‑1366, not count­ing his loan to him­self. For the final weeks of the dri­ve, peti­tion­ers were receiv­ing com­pen­sa­tion of $1.50 a signature.
• Ear­li­er this month, the paid sig­na­ture dri­ve for I‑1366 came to an end, pre­sum­ably because Eyman has the sig­na­tures he needs to qual­i­fy. The most recent PDC reports, filed June 9th, show that a total of $1 mil­lion ($1,000,000 exact­ly) has been trans­ferred to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions since February.

Here is a list of all report­ed pay­ments to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions so far by Eyman’s cam­paign com­mit­tee, which is a new incar­na­tion of Vot­ers Want More Choic­es (VWMC). Note that it is ordered by the amount of the pay­ment, not the date.

Total: $1,000,000

Now, let’s do some math. If we were cor­rect­ly informed about peti­tion­ers being paid $0.75, $1.25, and $1.50 dur­ing the dri­ve (an aver­age of $1.17), and if the labor­ers Eyman’s tak­ing advan­tage of gath­ered around 320,000 sig­na­tures before stop­ping (which is all that’s need­ed), then an amount some­where in the neigh­bor­hood of $374,000 went to com­pen­sate peti­tion­ers for their labor.

What­ev­er sig­na­tures Eyman’s asso­ciates don’t dis­card will be sub­mit­ted to the Sec­re­tary of State by July 2nd, and those will be count­ed. So, in a mater of days, we’ll have an exact fig­ure. It stands to rea­son that Eyman & Co. aren’t going to pay peti­tion­ers for sig­na­tures Eyman does­n’t need, and isn’t going to submit.

Even if we assume a cost of $1.50 per sig­na­ture (the high­est report­ed rate) for the dura­tion of the entire dri­ve, that still works out to less than half a mil­lion dol­lars for the peti­tion­ers’ labor (again, assum­ing pay­ment for around 320,000 signatures).

We also have to account for what is known in this under­ground indus­try as over­ride costs. The “over­ride” is what’s paid to coor­di­na­tors like John Michael and Brent John­son, who col­lect sheets from the peti­tion­ers. We under­stand the typ­i­cal over­ride is between twen­ty-five and fifty cents per sig­na­ture; it varies by vol­ume. If the over­ride was fifty cents, then that adds around $160,000 in overhead.

Some addi­tion­al funds might have been spent bring­ing in out of state labor from Cal­i­for­nia or else­where, because vet­er­an local peti­tion­ers are reluc­tant to car­ry Eyman peti­tions after hav­ing been cheat­ed on their pay­ments in the past by Eyman and his asso­ciates. But bus tick­ets for a few dozen indi­vid­u­als don’t cost that much.

So where did the rest of the mil­lion dol­lars go?

We can only assume that Ruffi­no and Agazarm pock­et­ed it as prof­it. And per­haps Eyman is get­ting a kick­back from them in the form of a prof­it-shar­ing arrange­ment. We can’t be sure, because we can’t ver­i­fy the mon­ey trail beyond the pay­ments to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions. But we know that Eyman and his asso­ciates love to make mon­ey. This is a busi­ness for them. A lucra­tive busi­ness and a shady business.

An above­board busi­ness would com­ply with fed­er­al and state work­er pro­tec­tion laws, pay­ing work­er’s com­pen­sa­tion pre­mi­ums and tax­es that can amount to 15% of the wages paid to their employ­ees. But no reports have been filed with the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice or the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries by Cit­i­zen Solu­tions demon­strat­ing that these laws are being com­plied with and the peti­tion­ers pro­tect­ed. Their coor­di­na­tors (John Michael and Brent John­son) haven’t filed employ­ee pay­roll reports either, and the first quar­ter pay­ments are past due.

Ruffi­no and Agazarm are cer­tain­ly being paid well enough to take care of the peo­ple who are work­ing them. They’re also being paid well enough to afford to hire a good accoun­tant who could man­age their pay­roll and L&I account for them. But they’d rather oper­ate an under­ground cash busi­ness than play it straight.

The email cam­paign Eyman launched this week makes it sound like Eyman and his asso­ciates are in a sprint to the fin­ish, fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to gath­er enough sig­na­tures in time to meet the dead­line stip­u­lat­ed by the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion for statewide ini­tia­tives to the people.

But we know that’s not true. From look­ing at our field intel­li­gence, we can con­clude that the paid sig­na­ture dri­ve for I‑1366 is over.

Reports filed by Eyman’s own trea­sur­er show his cam­paign com­mit­tee has already trans­ferred more than twice the amount of mon­ey need­ed to com­pen­sate peti­tion­ers for 320,000 sig­na­tures, which, again, is all that’s need­ed. Why does Eyman need to send Agazarm and Ruffi­no anoth­er $100,000?

It is worth not­ing that this isn’t the first time that Eyman has inflat­ed the cost of a sig­na­ture dri­ve. Pri­or to 2015, the last time that Eyman did a paid sig­na­ture dri­ve with Roy and Eddie was in 2012, when he qual­i­fied I‑1185 as an ini­tia­tive to the peo­ple while at the same time run­ning a stealth sig­na­ture dri­ve for a sec­ond ini­tia­tive, I‑517. I‑517 was an ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture; it lat­er appeared on the Novem­ber 2013 bal­lot and was over­whelm­ing­ly defeat­ed by voters.

As with I‑1366, Eyman raised over $1 mil­lion to qual­i­fy I‑1185 to the statewide bal­lot, and trans­ferred most of that to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions for sig­na­ture gath­er­ing expens­es. Most of the mon­ey for I‑1185 came from large cor­po­ra­tions like BP and Cono­coPhillips, but small­er com­pa­nies gave as well. (I‑1185 was Eyman’s most recent I‑601 clone. It attempt­ed to require a two-thirds vote to raise rev­enue, but this scheme was struck down by the state Supreme Court in Feb­ru­ary 2013.)

The Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness (AWB) act­ed as Eyman’s bundler dur­ing the I‑1185 cam­paign, and even paid out large chunks of Cit­i­zen Solu­tions direct­ly, with­out going through Eyman’s cam­paign committee.

What the AWB did­n’t know was that the actu­al cost to run the sig­na­ture dri­ve was much less than $1 mil­lion. How do we know that? Because we know how many sig­na­tures were sub­mit­ted, and we know what the peti­tion­ers were paid:

Most of the mon­ey that went to Cit­i­zen Solu­tions to pay for I‑1185 sig­na­tures did not go to the peti­tion crews. It was pocked by Ruffi­no and Agazarm (and pos­si­bly Eyman as well) as prof­it. Miles and Steve [peti­tion­ers who worked on the cam­paign] have tes­ti­fied in sworn affadi­v­its that they were being paid a dol­lar per sig­na­ture, and we know that oth­er peti­tion­ers were col­lect­ing for the same lev­el of com­pen­sa­tion. The Sec­re­tary of State’s office report­ed last July that 320,003 sig­na­tures were sub­mit­ted for I‑1185. If each sig­na­ture cost Ruffi­no and Agazarm a dol­lar, that would mean the cost of the sig­na­ture dri­ve was around $320,000.

For argument’s sake, let’s assume the total costs of the sig­na­ture dri­ve actu­al­ly came to $1.25 a sig­na­ture. That’s more than what the peti­tion­ers were being paid, but it allows us to sup­pose there may have been oth­er costs asso­ci­at­ed with the sig­na­ture drive.

If we mul­ti­ply $1.25 by 320,003, we get $400,003.75. That still leaves more than $700,000 unac­count­ed for.

What hap­pened to all of that mon­ey? Where did it go? We know it didn’t go to the work­ers who gath­ered sig­na­tures out­side of shop­ping malls, sta­di­ums, and fer­ry ter­mi­nals. We can only con­clude it was pock­et­ed as profit.

The affadi­v­its men­tioned in the excerpt above were sub­mit­ted to the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion as part of a com­plaint filed by activist Sher­ry Bock­winkel of Taco­ma in August of 2012. While the I‑517 stealth sig­na­ture dri­ve was still under­way, she noticed that a num­ber of things did­n’t add up, and filed a com­plaint with the PDC alleg­ing that the stealth cam­paign was being ille­gal­ly run.

It’s been near­ly three years since that com­plaint was filed, and over two years since the PDC con­firmed it would look into it, but it’s still unresolved.

When asked about the sta­tus of the case, PDC staff will only say that the inves­ti­ga­tion is still open and that com­plaints can take time to resolve.

Is it any won­der Eyman thinks he can get away with con­tin­u­al­ly dup­ing his own fol­low­ers? His past wrong­do­ing keeps get­ting over­looked or ignored. We reg­u­lar­ly talk about it here, and occa­sion­al­ly, so do big­ger media outlets.

But it has not led to any action on the part of the PDC.

The only time the PDC ever real­ly went after Eyman was in 2002, after he admit­ted tak­ing over $100,000 in cam­paign mon­ey for his own per­son­al use and lying about it. The PDC referred that case to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Chris Gre­goire. Gre­goire took Eyman to court, but decid­ed the next year to set­tle the law­suit for $50,000 and the stip­u­la­tion that Eyman nev­er again serve as a cam­paign trea­sur­er.

As we have seen, Eyman does not need to be his own trea­sur­er to con­tin­ue prof­itably oper­at­ing his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. Eyman was off the bal­lot for only one year after get­ting caught with his hand in the cook­ie jar. Then he was back in busi­ness. Last year was just the first time since 2003 that Eyman did­n’t have enough mon­ey to make the statewide bal­lot with the scheme that he tried to qualify.

(He also failed to qual­i­fy any­thing in 2006, though that was due to mis­man­age­ment, incom­pe­tence, or a com­bi­na­tion of both, not lack of funds.)

The peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton have increas­ing­ly begun to real­ize that Eyman is a snake oil sales­man. Over the last ten years, the vot­ers have defeat­ed near­ly every Eyman ini­tia­tive that had a well-orga­nized, vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion campaign.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Eyman keeps get­ting on the bal­lot, because he’s man­aged to per­suade a whole bunch of wealthy con­ser­v­a­tives that he walks on water. And those are the peo­ple who real­ly mat­ter to Eyman. They’re the ones with the money.

Eyman and his asso­ciates are the only peo­ple deriv­ing any ben­e­fit from his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. They’re the win­ners in this long-run­ning, fif­teen-year con.

The rest of us, includ­ing Eyman’s own fol­low­ers, are the losers. Whether they real­ize it or not, they’re help­ing to make us all poor­er. So long as Eyman’s bene­fac­tors keep patron­iz­ing him, and so long as the state con­tin­ues to allow his wrong­do­ing to go unpun­ished, Eyman will stay in busi­ness, prof­it­ing from greed.