CarbonWA is paying a convicted forger and Tim Eyman pal to run I‑732 signature drive

The group work­ing to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive to the 2016 Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture that would levy a tax on pol­luters and use the rev­enue to reduce oth­er tax­es is rely­ing on the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing ser­vices of a com­pa­ny run by a man pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed of forgery who has also done work for dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute has learned.

Reports filed by Car­bon­WA, the name of the group, show that it hired Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC to gath­er sig­na­tures for Ini­tia­tive 732 begin­ning this past summer.

Your Choice Peti­tions LLC has two gov­ern­ing per­sons: Dou­glas Camp­bell and Brent T. John­son. YCP’s address of record is coin­ci­den­tal­ly the same address that Brent John­son is reg­is­tered to vote at. Accord­ing to the state’s vot­er reg­is­tra­tion data­base, he joined the rolls on July 6th, 2015, and records also show he sub­se­quent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the August 2015 Top Two election.

Here is a table show­ing Car­bon­WA’s first set of pay­ments to Your Choice Peti­tions LLC, as report­ed to the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission:

John­son is an asso­ciate of Roy Ruffi­no and Eddie Agazarm, whose shady “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions” com­pa­ny pro­vides the labor to qual­i­fy Tim Eyman’s destruc­tive ini­tia­tives, includ­ing Eyman’s lat­est, Ini­tia­tive 1366. John­son was a sub­con­trac­tor for Cit­i­zen Solu­tions on its sig­na­ture dri­ve, which wrapped up a few weeks ago.

I‑1366, which NPI is cur­rent­ly work­ing to defeat, is Eyman’s response to the inval­i­da­tion of his I‑601 clones… mea­sures that uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required a two-thirds vote to raise rev­enue. I‑1366 would slash fund­ing for schools in Wash­ing­ton State if the Leg­is­la­ture does­n’t bow down to Tim Eyman’s demand to sub­mit a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment rein­stat­ing the two-thirds scheme.

Like oth­er firms in the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try that think the law sim­ply does­n’t apply to them, Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC present­ly does­n’t have a work­er’s comp account with the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries like it should.

More alarm­ing­ly, as men­tioned, John­son has a crim­i­nal history.

He was arrest­ed in July of 2005 on charges of forgery, arraigned the fol­low­ing month, and offered an Alford plea in Sep­tem­ber of 2005.

A con­vict­ed forg­er seems like the very last sort of per­son who should be entrust­ed with over­see­ing a sig­na­ture dri­ve for a statewide initiative.

Yet, that’s who Car­bon­WA has turned to in order to qual­i­fy I‑732.

Whether or not they vet­ted John­son, they exer­cised extreme­ly poor judg­ment by enter­ing into a busi­ness rela­tion­ship with him. Their unwise deci­sion does­n’t bode well for either the future of their ini­tia­tive or their organization.