City of Seattle joins coalition opposing Tim Eyman’s awful I‑1366 with unanimous vote

The broad, diverse, bipar­ti­san coali­tion fight­ing to defeat Tim Eyman’s awful Ini­tia­tive 1366 by Novem­ber 3rd just keeps on get­ting bigger.

Today, the Seat­tle City Coun­cil vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to put the state’s largest munic­i­pal­i­ty on record as opposed to I‑1366, which would slash $8 bil­lion in sales tax rev­enue over the next six years — unless the Leg­is­la­ture bows to the will of Eyman and his wealthy bene­fac­tors and pass­es an amend­ment sab­o­tag­ing our Con­sti­tu­tion’s major­i­ty vote require­ment for pas­sage of bills and budgets.

I‑1366 is a mil­i­tant, hostage-tak­ing scheme cooked up by Eyman in the wake of the failed fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down in 2013. As Eyman’s pre­vi­ous attempts to sab­o­tage major­i­ty rule were struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court in League of Edu­ca­tion Vot­ers v. State, Eyman is try­ing to coerce law­mak­ers into mod­i­fy­ing Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 of our Con­sti­tu­tion by tak­ing Wash­ing­ton’s youth (and all the rest of us, too) as his hostages.

Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 is the pro­vi­sion that says we run this state demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, and that a major­i­ty vote is the thresh­old for pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion. And major­i­ty vote means greater than fifty per­cent. No more, and no less.

Tim Eyman does­n’t want deci­sions about rev­enue to be made the way our founders intend­ed… by fifty of nine­ty-eight rep­re­sen­ta­tives and twen­ty-five of forty-nine sen­a­tors. He wants to change the rules to allow as few as thir­ty-three rep­re­sen­ta­tives or sev­en­teen sen­a­tors to dic­tate what hap­pens by requir­ing a two-thirds vote.

Iron­i­cal­ly, though, chang­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion requires a two-thirds vote, because our Con­sti­tu­tion is our plan of gov­ern­ment, which isn’t meant to be changed light­ly. And Eyman does not have the votes. So he is resort­ing to black­mail. Extortion.

Thank­ful­ly, peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions all around Wash­ing­ton State are stand­ing up and say­ing NO to Ini­tia­tive 1366. Just about every respectable major news­pa­per in the state has come out against I‑1366, too.

And now, so have our state’s two largest cities. Spokane went first, last week, and now Seat­tle, the Emer­ald City, has joined this most noble of caus­es as well.

Seat­tle’s res­o­lu­tion oppos­ing I‑1366 was unan­i­mous­ly approved after speech­es by Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Tim Burgess and Coun­cilmem­ber Kshama Sawant.

Burgess briefly explained the harm the ini­tia­tive would inflict, and urged a no vote. Sawant con­curred and empha­sized that Sce­nario 2 of I‑1366 could lock in Wash­ing­ton State’s incred­i­bly regres­sive, worst-in-the-nation tax code for all time (because it would close off the leg­isla­tive process as an avenue for tax reform).

The Coun­cil then heard pub­lic tes­ti­mo­ny for and against the res­o­lu­tion. Sev­er­al civic gad­flies spoke in favor of I‑1366 and against the res­o­lu­tion, includ­ing peren­ni­al office seek­er Good­spaceguy, who laugh­ably referred to Eyman as a hero.

Rep­re­sent­ing the NO on I‑1366 Coali­tion was Sara Kiesler of Fuse Wash­ing­ton, one of the ear­li­est orga­ni­za­tions to take a posi­tion against the mea­sure, along with NPI, the King Coun­ty Democ­rats, and the Wash­ing­ton State Democ­rats. Sara not­ed that I‑1366 is a “lose-lose” ini­tia­tive, and urged vot­ers to reject Eyman’s attempt to toy with our state Con­sti­tu­tion, which has served us well since state­hood in 1889.

NPI thanks Coun­cilm­bers Burgess, Sawant, Har­rell, God­den, O’Brien, Okamo­to, Bagshaw, Ras­mussen, and Lica­ta for their sup­port of our cam­paign. Togeth­er, we can reject the pol­i­tics of hostage-tak­ing and defeat Tim Eyman’s I‑1366.