Tim Eyman turns in signatures for I‑1366 as opposition coalition roster continues to grow

This morn­ing in Olympia, Tim Eyman showed up at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex to turn in sig­na­tures for I‑1366, his lat­est and most destruc­tive ini­tia­tive yet, more than four hours ahead of the 3 PM appoint­ment that he had sched­uled. In a depar­ture from tra­di­tion, Eyman decid­ed not to hold a press con­fer­ence at the Annex. Instead, he brought his own video­g­ra­ph­er along to doc­u­ment the event, and then left Olympia with­out hold­ing a show for the media.

In an ear­ly-morn­ing email sent out ahead of his vis­it to the Elec­tions Annex, Eyman glee­ful­ly announced that he was sub­mit­ting “334,044+” sig­na­tures for I‑1366 (which, if true — and that’s an if — is more than the 25% cush­ion that the Sec­re­tary of State rec­om­mends that spon­sors submit).

246,372 valid vot­er sig­na­tures are cur­rent­ly required to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive to the Novem­ber 2015 bal­lot. The Sec­re­tary of State will now begin exam­in­ing Eyman’s peti­tions, count the num­ber of sig­na­tures sub­mit­ted, and then con­duct a ran­dom sam­ple check. If the ini­tia­tive pass­es the check, it will be cer­ti­fied for the Novem­ber 2015 bal­lot. That should hap­pen with­in the next cou­ple of weeks.

Since Eyman revealed in Feb­ru­ary that he would be tak­ing out a loan against his house to finance I‑1366, we’ve been oper­at­ing under the assump­tion that I‑1366 would make the bal­lot. That still has­n’t hap­pened yet, but we’re prob­a­bly only a few days away from a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion announce­ment by the Sec­re­tary of State.

Aside from crow­ing about the suc­cess of the sig­na­ture dri­ve in his email, Eyman also tout­ed endorse­ments for I‑1366 from the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, the Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty, the mil­i­tant firearms activist Alan Got­tlieb, and right wing sen­a­tors Michael Baum­gart­ner and Doug Erick­sen… who all belong to the usu­al sup­port­ing cast that serves as an amen cho­rus for Eyman’s schemes.

The NO on I‑1336 Coali­tion, by con­trast, is much big­ger and broad­er. The list of par­tic­i­pat­ing orga­ni­za­tions grows longer with every week.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that that NAMI Wash­ing­ton and the League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers have joined the fight against I‑1366, along­side NPI, Fuse, the League of Women Vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, Statewide Pover­ty Action Net­work, PTE Local 17, Wash­ing­ton Envi­ron­men­tal Coun­cil, Wash­ing­ton Con­ser­va­tion Vot­ers, and many more peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions. A longer list can be viewed on the coali­tion’s web­site.

Yes­ter­day, we also announced that we have formed a statewide cam­paign com­mit­tee to ensure the NO on 1366 Coali­tion is well served by a capa­ble lead­er­ship team. For­mer Sec­re­tary of State Sam Reed, for­mer State Sen­a­tor Randy Gor­don, for­mer State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Phyl­lis Ken­ney, and NW Media Allies own­er Sue Evans have gra­cious­ly agreed to help NPI pro­vide guid­ance and orga­niz­ing exper­tise. Microsoft alum and vet­er­an activist Matt Loschen serves as treasurer.

I‑1366 is eas­i­ly the most destruc­tive ini­tia­tive that Tim Eyman has ever spon­sored. Either out­come of the ini­tia­tive is dis­as­trous. If the Leg­is­la­ture were to capit­u­late to Eyman’s demand for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to sab­o­tage Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 of our state Con­sti­tu­tion with a super­ma­jor­i­ty vote require­ment for rev­enue, our regres­sive tax sys­tem would be per­ma­nent­ly locked into place.

And if the Leg­is­la­ture did­n’t capit­u­late, a multi­bil­lion dol­lar hole would be sud­den­ly blown into the state bud­get, caus­ing immense harm to our essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly our state’s uni­ver­si­ties, col­leges, and K‑12 schools.

It is imper­a­tive that I‑1366 be met with a vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion campaign.

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.