There goes another one.
Disgraced initiative promoter Tim Eyman was forced to admit failure yet again today as his scheme to overturn the Legislature’s 2019 revenue reforms met its demise in Olympia at the Secretary of State’s Elections Annex on Union Street.
Initiative 1648 sought to blow up the state budget by repealing the modest changes the House and Senate made to balance Washington’s tax code as part of the 2019–2021 operating budget. It also sought to slap a one year expiration date on any future revenue increase not subjected to a public vote.
Although Eyman filed I‑1648 back in January, he did not launch a signature drive for it until May, after the legislative session had concluded and after he had thrown in the towel on Referendum 80, his short-lived effort to force a vote on the new salary schedule approved by the Washington Citizens’ Commission on Salaries For Elected Officials for legislators and statewide elected officials.
An unhappy Tim Eyman was flanked by glum followers at the Secretary of State’s Elections Annex in Olympia. (Photo: Sherry Bockwinkel for NPI).
Eager to make I‑1648 more than just another forgettable ploy for money, Eyman teamed up with the secessionist group “Liberty State” PAC (or LSPAC) to put some muscle behind the measure instead of phoning it in.
(LSPAC is the militant, Matt Shea-affiliated group that seeks to break up Washington State and carve a large right wing utopia out of one of the two pieces, which would stretch from the Cascade Mountains to the Idaho border.)
LSPAC giddily latched on to I‑1648, distributing petitions to right wing activists far and wide. It organized a Facebook group for I‑1648 and created a database of locations where I‑1648 petitions could be found, delighting Eyman, who cranked up his hype machine as loud as it could go, enlisting his amen chorus on right wing talk radio to advertise I‑1648. John Carlson, Kirby Wilbur, Dori Monson, and Saul Spady all dutifully pitched in to give Eyman free airtime.
But it wasn’t enough.
Despite predicting a “tsunami” of signatures for I‑1648 on Dori Monson’s show earlier this week, the petitions Eyman was counting on never materialized, demonstrating once again how difficult it is to get on the ballot without hired help.
Late in the afternoon, with the clock ticking on the deadline to submit signatures in support of initiatives to the people for 2019, a deflated Eyman finally conceded defeat. Because the Secretary of State will only accept petitions that contain at least the minimum number of signatures required to qualify, Eyman and his cohorts ended up having nothing to turn in.
Initially, Eyman was evasive with respect to offering an estimate of how many signatures had been gathered. Under pressure to supply a number, Eyman eventually said that nearly 200,000 had been gathered. He repeated that figure in a video recorded in his car and posted to Facebook a short while later.
We have no way of knowing if that number holds any water, however, because Tim Eyman is about the least trustworthy person in the history of the State of Washington. As noted above, there will not be an official count of I‑1648 signatures since no petitions were actually turned in for processing.
Secretary of State Kim Wyman’s staff, however, had assumed there would be petitions to process for I‑1648, because Eyman had made an appointment with them to turn in signatures. Consequently, they had workers standing by at taxpayer expense to begin the validation and verification process.
This is not the first time an Eyman signature drive has ended this way.
In 2004, Eyman and his associates Jack and Mike Fagan hauled boxes of petitions for I‑864 into the Elections Annex to use as props. They proceeded to hold a press conference congratulating themselves on running an amazingly successful campaign despite not having collected enough signatures to qualify. I‑864 — a scheme to slash property taxes — disappeared into the dustbin.
Two years later, Eyman linked up with the fundamentalist right to spearhead a referendum campaign intended to overturn Washington’s groundbreaking law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
With minutes to go before the deadline, Eyman poured himself some sparkling cider and proceeded to announce the campaign had come up short, to the great dismay of multiple right wing church pastors and their political operatives, who proceeded to point fingers at each other in quick fashion.
As with I‑864, no petitions were ultimately submitted.
In our statement reacting to the demise of I‑1648, I explained that the measure represented a significant and grave threat to countless public services that benefit Washingtonians, from education and behavioral health to firefighting and fish passage modernization. Passage of the measure would have blown up the budget, endangering our communities and jeopardizing good paying jobs.
The demise of I‑1648 is especially welcome considering that Eyman has already gotten something destructive onto this year’s ballot. That would be I‑976, a scheme to wipe out billions in bipartisan transportation investments at the state, regional, and local levels. We’re working to defeat I‑976, and we invite you to join us. If we can send I‑976 to the graveyard where it belongs, then Tim Eyman will be zero for seven since 2015 — a truly unprecedented losing streak.
We know from experience that the only way to stop Eyman’s destructive initiative factory is to take him on and beat him. Let’s make it happen!
4 Comments
East of the Cascades the media is controlled.
Most people are to nothing as the rapture-nazis try to maintain control. All you have to do is look at who sponsored Nigel Farage to come to the Inland Empire’s capital, Spokane, and how the media told the public nothing.
The main program is to show old black and white television programs of cowboy shows. Not the old black and white of shows of Rat Patrol, Combat, 12 O’Clock High and other programs that present killing Nazis. They normalized Nazism east of the Cascades.
Great news, thanks for posting
A question: Modest changes to the House/Senate to balance Washington’s tax code? We had a surplus of taxes, why did we need millions more added? This does not add up. Can you explain the “modest” as needed with a surplus?
Thank you!
Lora, there was no surplus.
Sometimes, the revenue generated by the state in a certain period exceeds what the state had been expecting. (The Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council regularly publishes estimates of how much revenue is anticipated to flow into the state treasury.) But this does not mean that there is actually a surplus of tax revenue. Surplus is commonly understood to mean “more than what is needed”.
Washington has been underfunding public services for a long time, so when the Legislature gets a better than expected revenue forecast, all it means is legislators have a better starting point to work with when they are writing a budget.
Budgets are moral documents, so it makes no sense to write a budget based solely on what is presently coming in through existing tax revenue sources. The Legislature’s job isn’t simply to spend the money that the state is generating; it’s to determine what the people’s needs are and meet those needs as effectively as possible. Legislators knew our state needed investments in behavioral health, firefighting, access to college, and human services. So they wrote a budget that begins to put more money into those priorities.
Legislators chose to recover revenue the state was giving up by rescinding unnecessary tax exemptions that don’t serve the public interest. They also raised the hazardous substances tax paid by the petroleum industry and replaced the old flat real estate excise tax (REET) with a graduated REET that is fairer and equitable. Washingtonians selling property that’s valued at less than $1.5 million will actually pay less tax than under the old system.
It’s important to understand these details when appraising the work the Legislature did this session. Don’t put any stock in what Tim Eyman says — he cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything. Do your own research.
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