Thanks, Tim Eyman, for reminding us you’re incapable of comprehending our Constitution

Noto­ri­ous ini­tia­tive prof­i­teer Tim Eyman has been active in Wash­ing­ton State pol­i­tics a very long time — around twen­ty years, in fact. And as read­ers of the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate are well aware, Tim has made sell­ing destruc­tive right-wing ini­tia­tives his full time occu­pa­tion… to the detri­ment of Wash­ing­ton State.

The major­i­ty of the ini­tia­tives Eyman has attempt­ed have either failed to qual­i­fy for the bal­lot or been defeat­ed by vot­ers, and the major­i­ty of the ini­tia­tives Eyman has got­ten past the vot­ers have been struck down by the courts as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, begin­ning with I‑695 in 2000 and con­tin­u­ing with I‑722 the fol­low­ing year.

Since then, a slew of fur­ther Eyman schemes (I‑747, I‑960/I‑1053/I‑1185, I‑1366) have been chal­lenged and struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, while repeat­ed legal chal­lenges insti­gat­ed by Eyman wealthy bene­fac­tor Kem­per Free­man Jr. against Sound Tran­sit’s East Link project on the basis of con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty have failed.

You might think that some­one who has been active in Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tics for so long and who has become a full time (albeit unelect­ed) law­mak­er would have learned some­thing about law­mak­ing, and specif­i­cal­ly, how to write laws that com­port with the plan of gov­ern­ment our state’s Founders gave us.

But Eyman has not.

Time and again, Eyman has demon­strat­ed con­tempt for our Con­sti­tu­tion by seek­ing to sab­o­tage it, either with uncon­sti­tu­tion­al ini­tia­tives or through amend­ments intro­duced his cronies in the Leg­is­la­ture, like Pam Roach (R‑31st District).

More alarm­ing­ly, it appears Eyman is inca­pable of mere­ly com­pre­hend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion’s basic pro­vi­sions. That’s appar­ent from an email Eyman just sent out today, in which he whines and com­plains that Democ­rats are schem­ing to leave the 31st Dis­trict Sen­ate seat vacant so that Repub­li­cans will lack a major­i­ty in the state Sen­ate for the first few weeks of the leg­isla­tive session.

Wrote Eyman:

Next week is huge. Pam Roach won her race for the Pierce Coun­ty coun­cil and takes office on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 3rd. Lat­er that same night start­ing at 7pm, the 37 [Repub­li­can] precinct com­mit­tee offi­cers in the 31st dis­trict will meet at Sum­n­er Mid­dle School to choose 3 poten­tial suc­ces­sors for her sen­ate seat. Then it will be up to the King Coun­ty Coun­cil to appoint one of them.

The Democ­rats want to delay the selec­tion of Pam’s suc­ces­sor so that the Sen­ate will tied 24–24. But a tie means noth­ing gets done, right? Not accord­ing to Cyrus Habib, the new activist lieu­tenant gov­er­nor.  He thinks he can break tie votes in the sen­ate (many believe he can­not). So their plan is to not choose a suc­ces­sor and then jam through a slew of lib­er­al leg­is­la­tion the first week of the ses­sion and get it over to the Demo­c­rat-con­trolled House and onto Inslee’s desk likki­ty split. It’s pure sleaze but whad­dya expect from Democrats.

An aside: Eyman has some nerve accus­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed offi­cials of “pure sleaze”, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing he tried to black­mail Democ­rats into vot­ing against their val­ues and prin­ci­ples with I‑1366 last year (he failed) and then tried to pun­ish them through an ille­gal attack cam­paign sev­er­al months later.

(Eyman took down his attack ads after NPI dis­cov­ered he broke the law by fail­ing to report them prop­er­ly as inde­pen­dent expen­di­tures.)

I have no doubt that were Repub­li­cans in a posi­tion to deny Democ­rats a twen­ty-fifth vote in the state Sen­ate by tak­ing their time mak­ing an appoint­ment, they would do it in a heart­beat… and Eyman would be cheer­ing them on

We have seen Repub­li­cans adopt scorched-earth tac­tics at many lev­els of gov­ern­ment in order to get their way. For instance, pow­er-hun­gry Repub­li­cans shame­ful­ly refused to act on Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s nom­i­na­tion of Mer­rick Gar­land to fill a vacan­cy on the Unit­ed States Supreme Court. Gar­land did­n’t even get a hearing.

I have yet to hear Eyman con­demn such behav­ior as sleazy, and I doubt I ever will. Eyman typ­i­cal­ly only crit­i­cizes Repub­li­cans when he is angry about them work­ing with Democ­rats to get some­thing done — like pass a trans­porta­tion package.

Any­way, in the above-quot­ed para­graphs, I’ve high­light­ed two pas­sages that serve as a reminder that Eyman’s grasp of our Con­sti­tu­tion is very poor.

In the first pas­sage, where Eyman is attempt­ing to describe how Pam Roach will be replaced, he writes: “Then it will be up to the King Coun­ty Coun­cil to appoint one of them.” This is incor­rect. Actu­al­ly, it is not up to the King Coun­ty Coun­cil; it is up to the King and Pierce Coun­ty Coun­cils, act­ing togeth­er.

The Con­sti­tu­tion says that when a leg­isla­tive vacan­cy exists in a dis­trict span­ning coun­ty lines, the leg­isla­tive author­i­ties of each coun­ty shall make a joint appoint­ment. The 31st is such a dis­trict; it includes precincts in both King and Pierce coun­ties. In fact, much of the dis­trict is in Pierce Coun­ty, not King County.

Here is what the Con­sti­tu­tion says about joint appointments:

ARTICLE II, SECTION 15. VACANCIES IN LEGISLATURE AND IN PARTISAN COUNTY ELECTIVE OFFICE. […] That in case of a vacan­cy occur­ring in the office of joint sen­a­tor, or joint rep­re­sen­ta­tive, the vacan­cy shall be filled from a list of three nom­i­nees select­ed by the state cen­tral com­mit­tee, by appoint­ment by the joint action of the boards of coun­ty leg­isla­tive author­i­ties of the coun­ties com­pos­ing the joint sen­a­to­r­i­al or joint rep­re­sen­ta­tive dis­trict, the per­son appoint­ed to fill the vacan­cy must be from the same leg­isla­tive dis­trict and of the same polit­i­cal par­ty as the leg­is­la­tor whose office has been vacat­ed, and in case a major­i­ty of the mem­bers of the coun­ty leg­isla­tive author­i­ty do not agree upon the appoint­ment with­in six­ty days after the vacan­cy occurs, the gov­er­nor shall with­in thir­ty days there­after, and from the list of nom­i­nees pro­vid­ed for here­in, appoint a per­son who shall be from the same leg­isla­tive dis­trict and of the same polit­i­cal par­ty as the leg­is­la­tor whose office has been vacated.

The statu­to­ry Repub­li­can state cen­tral com­mit­tee will need to send the King and Pierce Coun­ty Coun­cils three names of poten­tial suc­ces­sors to Pam Roach. After they do so, the coun­cils will have the respon­si­bil­i­ty and oppor­tu­ni­ty to fill the vacan­cy through a joint appointment.

If they can­not agree, then the deci­sion will even­tu­al­ly fall to Gov­er­nor Inslee, who will need to make a selec­tion from the same list.

That is the process.

Regret­tably, Eyman neglect­ed to men­tion these impor­tant details to his fol­low­ers. He told them that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-dom­i­nat­ed King Coun­ty Coun­cil will get to pick Roach’s suc­ces­sor, but again, that’s not so. There will be no joint appoint­ment unless the King and Pierce coun­cils can agree on one of the three names.

Then Eyman goes on, bizarrely, to ques­tion whether incom­ing Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Cyrus Habib will have the pow­er to break ties, writ­ing: “He thinks he can break tie votes in the sen­ate (many believe he cannot).”

Many believe he can­not? What? Who are these peo­ple Eyman’s oblique­ly refer­ring to? Who­ev­er they are, they’re not famil­iar with our plan of government.

Cyrus Habib will in fact have the pow­er to break ties because the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion explic­it­ly gives him that power:

ARTICLE II, SECTION 10. ELECTION OF OFFICERS. Each house shall elect its own offi­cers; and when the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor shall not attend as pres­i­dent, or shall act as gov­er­nor, the sen­ate shall choose a tem­po­rary pres­i­dent. When pre­sid­ing, the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor shall have the decid­ing vote in case of an equal divi­sion of the senate.

Note that last sen­tence: When pre­sid­ing, the lieu­tenant gov­er­nor shall have the decid­ing vote in case of an equal divi­sion of the senate.

The Con­sti­tu­tion does not say may; it says shall. It is plain­ly evi­dent that the Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor has the pow­er to break tie votes in the Senate.

There have been occa­sions when the Sen­ate dead­locked under retir­ing Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Brad Owen, and he exer­cised his author­i­ty to break ties accordingly.

Cyrus Habib, it should be men­tioned, is also present­ly a state sen­a­tor who (like Pam Roach) is in the mid­dle of a four-year term.

Habib’s res­ig­na­tion will have tak­en effect by the time the Leg­is­la­ture con­venes on Jan­u­ary 9th, which will also leave the Democ­rats short one mem­ber of their cau­cus unless the King Coun­ty Coun­cil has cho­sen a suc­ces­sor by then.

The dis­trict Habib rep­re­sents lies sole­ly with­in King Coun­ty, so unlike in the 31st, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil will have the pow­er to choose Habib’s suc­ces­sor itself.

Habib will take office as the six­teenth Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of Wash­ing­ton on Jan­u­ary 11th, 2016, two days after the Leg­is­la­ture convenes.

Eyman has a great desire to see Roach’s seat get filled because Repub­li­cans will lack a work­ing major­i­ty until she has a suc­ces­sor. And that means Repub­li­cans won’t be able to attempt to sab­o­tage Sen­ate rules to require a two-thirds vote to raise rev­enue, or bring any­thing of con­se­quence to the floor for a vote.

Inci­den­tal­ly, it is actu­al­ly Democ­rats who have a Sen­ate major­i­ty for 2017 — at least on paper — because Sen­a­tor Tim Shel­don of the 35th Dis­trict calls him­self a Demo­c­rat, and was elect­ed as a Demo­c­rat, most recent­ly in 2014.

Were Shel­don cau­cus­ing with the par­ty he claims to belong to, then Democ­rats would have an actu­al major­i­ty of twen­ty-five for 2017, thanks to Lisa Well­man’s recent vic­to­ry over Steve Lit­zow in the 41st District.

How­ev­er, Shel­don has been cau­cus­ing with Repub­li­cans for four years now. He and Rod­ney Tom defect­ed to the Repub­li­cans in a post-elec­tion pow­er coup. The two of them became Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore and Major­i­ty Leader, respec­tive­ly, and Repub­li­cans assumed con­trol over the Sen­ate’s com­mit­tee structure.

For its part, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty hap­pens to con­sid­er Tim Shel­don a Repub­li­can. Amus­ing­ly, so does Tim Eyman, who claimed in his email today that vot­ers vot­ed in a Repub­li­can-con­trolled state Sen­ate this year, even though Sen­ate Democ­rats had a net gain of one seat in the elec­tion that now gives them a the­o­ret­i­cal majority.

Well, at least there’s one thing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and Tim Eyman can agree on.