Tim Eyman’s I‑1366 is bad public policy that even conservatives ought to be against

Edi­tor’s Note: I authored this post last week but am repost­ing it for your enjoy­ment as we head into the final week­end of the 2015 gen­er­al election. 

This morn­ing, I appeared for the sec­ond time this week on well-known con­ser­v­a­tive John Carl­son’s pro­gram, The Com­mute with Carl­son, to debate I‑1366 with Carl­son and Pierce Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Dan Roach (who are both Tim Eyman fans).

Dur­ing my remarks on the pro­gram, I empha­sized that I‑1366 would cause seri­ous long term dam­age to our state, under­min­ing our plan of gov­ern­ment and set­ting a bad prece­dent that oth­er play­ers in state pol­i­tics might try to copy.

I‑1366 is a mali­cious attempt by Eyman to coerce the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture into doing his will. After the Supreme Court thwart­ed his pre­vi­ous attempts to sub­vert Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 with Ini­tia­tives 960, 1053, and 1185 two years ago, Tim Eyman turned his atten­tion to try­ing to sab­o­tage that all-impor­tant major­i­ty vote pro­vi­sion of our Con­sti­tu­tion through a con­sti­tu­tion­al amendment.

But there’s some­thing that’s block­ing Eyman from sim­ply being able to force us all to vote on the amend­ment he wants using his wealthy bene­fac­tors’ money.

And that is anoth­er crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant pro­vi­sion of our state Con­sti­tu­tion… Arti­cle XXIII, which says that all con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments have to orig­i­nate in the Leg­is­la­ture and receive a two-thirds vote of each house to pass before being sub­mit­ted to the peo­ple for rat­i­fi­ca­tion at a sub­se­quent gen­er­al election.

See, unlike in Ore­gon and Cal­i­for­nia and a few oth­er states, in Wash­ing­ton, only the Leg­is­la­ture has the pow­er to pro­pose con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments. The peo­ple don’t. That is the way our founders want­ed it. The peo­ple have final say over any amend­ment, but all amend­ments have to orig­i­nate in the Legislature.

Since Tim Eyman is not an elect­ed leg­is­la­tor, and has nev­er had the courage to run for office, he does­n’t have the pow­er to pro­pose an amend­ment. And even if he did, he does­n’t have the votes to pass it. Two-thirds is, after all, a high bar.

And so Eyman has resort­ed to black­mail. Coer­cion. Extor­tion. Call it what you like, I‑1366 is intend­ed to force elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives like NPI’s Vice Pres­i­dent and Sec­re­tary Gael Tar­leton (one of our nine­ty-eight state rep­re­sen­ta­tives) into vot­ing against their val­ues, and against our state’s val­ues. That’s wrong.

I‑1366 is not a revote on the idea of hav­ing a two-thirds vote thresh­old for rais­ing rev­enue. As men­tioned, the Supreme Court has already said that’s uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. This ini­tia­tive is an attempt to forcibly invoke the con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment process by a spe­cif­ic date, which is total­ly beyond the scope of the ini­tia­tive power.

Pas­sage of I‑1366 would set a ter­ri­ble prece­dent. To say that the door would be open to future mis­chief mak­ing would be an understatement.

When I appeared on John’s show, I told him, “I’d like your lis­ten­ers to imag­ine this morn­ing what it would be like if the shoe was on the oth­er foot”.

“Imag­ine,” I said, “that next year, a con­sor­tium of left wing groups decides to copy a page out of the Eyman play­book and demand the Con­sti­tu­tion be changed to say that it should take a two-thirds vote to low­er our state’s min­i­mum wage or to reduce ben­e­fits guar­an­teed to pub­lic work­ers by con­tracts with unions.”

“The min­i­mum wage could still be raised by major­i­ty vote, but not low­ered… that would per­ma­nent­ly require a two-thirds vote. The min­i­mum wage, by the way, is very pop­u­lar with vot­ers. They’ve vot­ed for it over and over.”

“Pas­sage of an amend­ment would itself require a two-thirds vote, of course. Impos­si­ble with­out Repub­li­can sup­port. Now imag­ine, that in an attempt to secure the votes of East­ern Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans, left wing groups take a mil­i­tant approach and qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive that says to those East­ern Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­cans, €œIf you don’t adopt the par­tic­u­lar amend­ment we want by this par­tic­u­lar date, the state bud­get will be altered to elim­i­nate fund­ing for projects in your dis­tricts in East­ern Wash­ing­ton. You can either adopt the amend­ment or you and your con­stituents will suf­fer the con­se­quences.”

“Would­n’t you agree that sounds ridicu­lous? Out­ra­geous? Now you know how oppo­nents of I‑1366 feel. This is a bla­tant attempt to black­mail leg­is­la­tors who believe that major­i­ty rule should apply to pas­sage of all bills and bud­gets into vot­ing against their val­ues to change the Con­sti­tu­tion. It’s bad pub­lic policy.”

I did­n’t expect to change many minds by going on Carl­son’s show, but I hope I at least gave his lis­ten­ers some­thing to think about.

I think Pope Fran­cis is cor­rect: we reach bet­ter deci­sions when we oper­ate by the Gold­en Rule. Do unto oth­ers as you would have them do unto you.

If Tim Eyman is suc­cess­ful with I‑1366, the mil­i­tant tac­tics of hostage tak­ing could become a fix­ture of Wash­ing­ton State pol­i­tics (as they have in nation­al politics).

That would be awful.

Tim Eyman has been called a con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal activist many times — that’s how his Wikipedia entry describes him, for instance. But giv­en that Eyman does­n’t seem to want to con­serve any­thing, not even the plan of gov­ern­ment our founders gave us all the way back in 1889, that does­n’t seem like an appro­pri­ate label for him. A more accu­rate descrip­tor would be rad­i­cal right wing pur­vey­or of bad ideas.

In this cam­paign, I have heard from real con­ser­v­a­tives who cher­ish the Con­sti­tu­tion that has been hand­ed down to us, and agree that our sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment should be defend­ed. I applaud these true con­ser­v­a­tives for help­ing par­tic­i­pate in the noble and wor­thy cause of defeat­ing this awful initiative.

The team at NPI and I emphat­i­cal­ly believe major­i­ty rule is good for every­body. We wel­come those con­ser­v­a­tives and Repub­li­cans who feel like­wise, and we are proud to cam­paign along with them to pro­tect Wash­ing­ton from the harm of I‑1366.

Any­one who has watched the NO on I‑1366 cam­paign take shape over the past few months can see that it is broad, deep, and bipar­ti­san. This coali­tion is open to all who believe in the val­ues that Wash­ing­ton was found­ed upon, whether they be Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans, inde­pen­dents, or sup­port­ers of minor parties.

NO on I‑1366’s diverse ros­ter also includes orga­ni­za­tions from the labor com­mu­ni­ty, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, envi­ron­men­tal com­mu­ni­ty, and edu­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ty, from the Wash­ing­ton Round­table and Seat­tle Met­ro­pol­i­tan Cham­ber of Com­merce to the state PTA, AARP Wash­ing­ton, League of Women Vot­ers, Coun­cil of Fire Fight­ers, and the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, AFL-CIO… as well as wide­ly-respect­ed groups like NAMI Wash­ing­ton and the Chil­dren’s Alliance.

We are all stand­ing togeth­er to ensure that Wash­ing­ton State moves for­ward, not back­wards. We ask you to join with us in reject­ing this false choice that Tim Eyman has man­u­fac­tured as the lat­est bad idea to come out of his ini­tia­tive factory.

By Novem­ber 3rd, please remem­ber to return your bal­lot and vote NO on I‑1366.