Tim Eyman’s Failure Chart has been given a new entry following yesterday’s I‑1366 ruling

Now that the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court has put the kibosh on Tim Eyman’s I‑1366 — an incred­i­bly-destruc­tive, Ted Cruz-style scheme to force the Leg­is­la­ture to sab­o­tage the major­i­ty vote clause of our state Con­sti­tu­tion by hold­ing $8 bil­lion in fund­ing for edu­ca­tion and essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices hostage — we can add it to Eyman’s Fail­ure Chart, a list sum­ma­riz­ing the out­come of each of the statewide mea­sures Eyman has qual­i­fied or attempt­ed to qual­i­fy to the bal­lot since 1999.

As the Fail­ure Chart’s name implies, Tim Eyman’s record is full of fail­ures. Since 1999, all but one of his statewide mea­sures have met the fol­low­ing three fates:

• Defeat­ed by vot­ers: I‑745, I‑892, I‑985, I‑1033, I‑1125, I‑517 (6)
• Failed to qual­i­fy for the bal­lot: I‑267, I‑807, I‑864, I‑917, R‑65, I‑1325 (6)
• Struck down or par­tial­ly inval­i­dat­ed by the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court: I‑695, I‑722, I‑747, I‑776, I‑960/I‑1053/I‑1185, I‑1366 (8)

Here’s a few obser­va­tions regard­ing the ini­tia­tives in the final category.

First, it should be not­ed that I‑695, I‑722, I‑747, and I‑1366 were struck down in their entire­ty. The oth­er four were par­tial­ly inval­i­dat­ed, with the three sep­a­rat­ed by slash­es inval­i­dat­ed in one fell swoop (they’re clones of each other).

I‑695 and I‑747 were sub­se­quent­ly and fool­ish­ly rein­stat­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture and Gov­er­nors Locke and Gre­goire, although not in their entirety.

(I‑747 was rein­stat­ed over this orga­ni­za­tion’s loud and vocif­er­ous objec­tions, as is doc­u­ment­ed in the the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate’s archives.)

I‑722 was nev­er rein­stat­ed, and I‑1366 won’t be, either. Democ­rats in the Leg­is­la­ture were unit­ed this past ses­sion in refus­ing to capit­u­late to Eyman’s demands, and their posi­tion is not going to change. Two of the plain­tiffs in the case against I‑1366 were Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors: our friends Reuven Car­lyle and David Frockt, who rep­re­sent the 36th and 46th Dis­tricts, respectively.

The only statewide Eyman ini­tia­tive that has been imple­ment­ed with no legal chal­lenge was I‑900, from 2005, which con­cerned expand­ing the author­i­ty of the State Audi­tor to con­duct per­for­mance audits.

I‑900 was a flawed mea­sure, but as it was not a direct attack on our essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices or Con­sti­tu­tion, it has not been challenged.

Tim Eyman’s Fail­ure Chart shows that Tim Eyman is hor­ri­ble at leg­is­lat­ing. As we have said for years, Eyman is nei­ther a guru nor a king of any­thing. And it looks like the mass media are final­ly, final­ly com­ing around to that real­iza­tion, too.

The Seat­tle Times edi­to­ri­al­ized this morning:

Tim Eyman is not the state’s tax guru

Instead of con­tin­u­al­ly out­sourc­ing tax-pol­i­cy changes to Eyman, which are struck down again and again, the Leg­is­la­ture needs to address the flaws in the tax code head-on.

The Supreme Court’s school-financ­ing McCleary rul­ing — which will require bil­lions in new edu­ca­tion spend­ing — should force law­mak­ers to come to the table. Eyman shouldn’t be invit­ed, but the mes­sage vot­ers keep send­ing through his ini­tia­tives should be heard.

What a dif­fer­ence a few years makes. At long last, the Times seems to have shed its bizarre Jekyll/Hyde per­sona and is final­ly print­ing sense in its edi­to­r­i­al space.

We agree that it’s time for law­mak­ers to act bold­ly and coura­geous­ly to reform our bro­ken, regres­sive, upside down tax code, which is hold­ing our state back and open­ing the door to snake oil sales­man Eyman.

And by act, we mean pass leg­is­la­tion to raise the rev­enue nec­es­sary to amply pro­vide for the edu­ca­tion of all Wash­ing­ton’s youth plus fund our oth­er neglect­ed essen­tial ser­vices. Act does­n’t mean talk, as in debate the prob­lem with­out doing any­thing to solve it, or agree to study the prob­lem with anoth­er blue rib­bon com­mis­sion or expert pan­el. The prob­lem has been stud­ied; we’re all too famil­iar with the prob­lem at this point. What we need are solutions.