More déjà vu: Tim Eyman unveils Initiative 947, his latest effort to destroy Sound Transit

It’s been a lit­tle over twen­ty years since vot­ers in urban King, Sno­homish, and Pierce coun­ties vot­ed to cre­ate the Region­al Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty (RTA), bet­ter and more com­mon­ly known as Sound Tran­sit.

Dur­ing those years, thanks to the wise invest­ment of our tax dol­lars, our region has gained a net­work of express bus routes, com­muter rail lines, street­cars, park and rides, high occu­pan­cy vehi­cle ramps, and, most impor­tant­ly, a flour­ish­ing light rail spine con­nect­ing six­teen sta­tions, with dozens more under construction.

But while vot­ers have repeat­ed­ly giv­en Sound Tran­sit the green light to finance and build all this bad­ly need­ed tran­sit infra­struc­ture, there’s a guy liv­ing in Muk­il­teo who wants to turn back the clock and pull the plug on all the projects that haven’t already been fin­ished. His name is Tim Eyman, and he’s well known to Wash­ing­to­ni­ans as a lying, cheat­ing pur­vey­or of self-serv­ing initiatives.

The team at NPI have been orga­niz­ing oppo­si­tion to Eyman’s destruc­tive schemes for over fif­teen years through our Per­ma­nent Defense project. Our efforts to pro­vide vig­or­ous, year-round oppo­si­tion to Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry have met with great suc­cess, and our track record is evi­dence of that.

Most of the mea­sures Eyman has announced since the project was start­ed have either failed to qual­i­fy for the bal­lot (includ­ing his last con­sec­u­tive four), have been defeat­ed by vot­ers, have been or struck down in the courts. We main­tain a run­ning tal­ly that we call Tim Eyman’s Fail­ure Chart, which tells this story.

Tim Eyman absolute­ly loathes Sound Tran­sit and has tried repeat­ed­ly over the years to either sab­o­tage or destroy the agency to pre­vent it from build­ing any more projects. The num­ber of attempts he’s made to pre­vent Sound Tran­sit from going about its work, going back to I‑776 in 2002, could fill a book.

Although he has been defeat­ed at every turn, he still has a burn­ing desire to see Sound Tran­sit destroyed. That was evi­dent today when, in front of King Street Sta­tion, Eyman announced Ini­tia­tive 947, a near car­bon copy of his two failed 2016 attempts to — in his words — “gut Sound Tran­sit like a pig”.

I‑947 would repeal the fund­ing sources that the state Leg­is­la­ture grant­ed to Sound Tran­sit with the 2015 Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton pack­age. The intent of I‑947 is to force the can­cel­la­tion of most of the agen­cy’s slate of ST3 projects.

“Let’s stick it to Sound Tran­sit!” Eyman exhort­ed in an email to his fol­low­ers timed to go out after he had fin­ished spout­ing fab­ri­ca­tions in front of reporters.

Were I‑947 to be imple­ment­ed, fund­ing to extend light rail to Bal­lard, West Seat­tle, Everett, Taco­ma, and down­town Red­mond would be evis­cer­at­ed. Sounder and ST Express expan­sion would also be endangered.

Sound Tran­sit has already sold bonds to investors backed by ST3 rev­enue (which are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed), but Eyman does­n’t care about that. I‑947 attempts to force Sound Tran­sit to retire its ST3 bonds early.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 13. A new sec­tion is added to chap­ter 81.112 RCW to read as fol­lows: An author­i­ty must ful­ly retire, defease, or refi­nance any out­stand­ing bonds issued under this chap­ter, chap­ter 81.104 RCW, or chap­ter 46.17 RCW if:

(1) The fol­low­ing rev­enue col­lect­ed pri­or to the effec­tive date of this sec­tion has been pledged to the bonds:

(a) Rev­enue from the motor vehi­cle excise tax imposed under RCW 81.104.140 or 81.104.160; or

(b) Rev­enue from the motor vehi­cle weight fee imposed under RCW 46.17.365 or 46.68.415; and

(2) The bonds, by virtue of the terms of the bond con­tract, covenants, or sim­i­lar terms, may be retired or defeased ear­ly or refinanced.

As men­tioned, Eyman chose the plaza of Seat­tle’s King Street Sta­tion as the venue for his 11 AM media event announc­ing his new scheme to “stick it to Sound Tran­sit”. (Sound Tran­sit does­n’t own King Street Sta­tion, but it is the ter­mi­nus for the agen­cy’s two Sounder com­muter rail lines.)

Eyman may not see the irony in his choice of venue, but we do.

For years, King Street Sta­tion was a decrepit, neglect­ed facil­i­ty. It was unsafe and falling apart. State and local elect­ed lead­ers real­ized the sta­tion was in dan­ger of being lost to decay and decid­ed to restore it to its for­mer grandeur. Over $47 mil­lion in most­ly pub­lic funds were secured to real­ize the project.

Mon­ey for the project was pro­vid­ed by:

• Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tion (FTA)
• Sound Tran­sit
• Sur­face Trans­porta­tion Pro­gram (STP) Enhancement
• Amtrak
• State Appro­pri­a­tion — includes Trans­porta­tion Improve­ment Board (TIB)
• South Down­town (SODO) Foundation
• City of Seat­tle Depart­ment of Transportation
• 4Culture Ser­vices Agency
• Fed­er­al Rail­road Admin­is­tra­tion, High Speed Inter­ci­ty Pas­sen­ger Rail Program

Ren­o­va­tions were com­plet­ed in 2013. Thanks to this project, there is a beau­ti­ful wait­ing area for the ben­e­fit of the trav­el­ing pub­lic… and upstairs, there’s a love­ly pub­lic plaza where the likes of Tim Eyman can hold media events.

Eyman won’t admit it, but he ben­e­fits from the invest­ments we’ve made in pub­lic tran­sit infra­struc­ture just like every­one else. He proved it today when he became a user of a tran­sit facil­i­ty paid for by our tax dollars.

Eyman also ben­e­fits from all the bus­es and trains our tax dol­lars pay for even if he refus­es to ride them. When tran­sit ser­vice is of high qual­i­ty, when it is fre­quent, and when it is reli­able, peo­ple who own cars will delib­er­ate­ly eschew dri­ving in favor of rid­ing, tak­ing cars off the road and alle­vi­at­ing congestion.

Peo­ple like me. I have a car, but I chose to take the 545 into Seat­tle to get to Eyman’s press con­fer­ence instead of dri­ving. It was more convenient.

I invit­ed Eyman to be my guest for a ride on Link light rail — which I don’t think he’s ever been on — to see for him­self how use­ful it is. He declined my invi­ta­tion. I’m per­sis­tent, though, and I will con­tin­ue to offer to show him around the system.

The reporters who showed up at today’s “launch” have so far treat­ed it though it were real news in the sto­ries they’ve pub­lished. As far as we at NPI are con­cerned, though, it’s fake news until and unless Eyman demon­strates he has com­mit­ments from his wealthy bene­fac­tors to fund a sig­na­ture dri­ve. With­out those com­mit­ments, I‑947 will end up in the dust­bin like I‑1421 and I‑869.

Speak­ing of I‑1421: when Eyman announced it back in Feb­ru­ary of 2016, he did so in near­ly the exact same fash­ion as he did today with I‑947.

He sum­moned reporters to meet him late in the morn­ing at a venue of his choos­ing, spent around ten to fif­teen min­utes bash­ing Sound Tran­sit, and then made a big show of becom­ing the first sig­na­to­ry on the petition.

Take a look. This was a year and a half ago:

And this was today:

He even wore the same orange t‑shirt — notice in the pic­ture from today, it says “Nov 2016”, which is when Eyman envi­sioned that I‑1421 would be on the bal­lot. But although Eyman tried hard to get the Repub­li­can Par­ty and his bene­fac­tors to put mon­ey into I‑1421, they declined — wisely.

Eyman start­ed over with I‑869, an ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture for 2017; they still did­n’t bite. So Eyman moved on, and tried to get on the bal­lot in 2017 with I‑1550, a scheme to evis­cer­ate prop­er­ty tax­es. It too failed. Now Eyman is cir­cling back, bet­ting that peo­ple upset over the result of the ST3 vote will fuel his resurgence.

If you’ve ever gone to the mul­ti­plex to watch a real­ly lame remake of a movie that was orig­i­nal­ly made years ago, then you’ll get a sense of how I felt at today’s “launch”. It was a one-man show with the same plot and large­ly the same dia­logue as the spec­ta­cle that Eyman shame­less­ly put on last year.

Noth­ing that Eyman said today was new or inter­est­ing. It was just repack­aged lies. As I said, Eyman did not indi­cate, let alone demon­strate, that he has the six fig­ure checks com­ing to him that he needs to hire peti­tion crews to gath­er the 330,000 sig­na­tures min­i­mal­ly required to get I‑947 in front of the 2018 Legislature.

If Eyman does­n’t have the mon­ey, then he is just wast­ing every­one’s time. And if he does have the mon­ey, then our region is fac­ing a grave threat to our future that must be con­front­ed. We will be keep­ing a close watch and be ready to spring into action to shift our orga­niz­ing into high gear should that be the case.