Tim “Chairman” Eyman cuts deal with Lacey to get misdemeanor theft charge dismissed

Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman has made a deal with the City of Lacey to resolve the mis­de­meanor theft charge that was filed against him after he was caught steal­ing a chair from the Office Depot on Sleater Kin­ney Road in Feb­ru­ary — an inci­dent that result­ed in a mas­sive round of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty for Eyman.

Eyman’s chair theft was immor­tal­ized on video by a store secu­ri­ty cam­era. The footage shows Eyman sit­ting down in a Bren­ton Stu­dios May­hart chair in the store’s vestibule, spin­ning around, then stand­ing up and wheel­ing the chair out of the store to his vehi­cle with­out first tak­ing it to the counter to pay for it.

Eyman and his attor­neys have laugh­ably tried to char­ac­ter­ize the theft as “a mis­un­der­stand­ing” and “an hon­est mis­take”. Eyman has (not cred­i­bly) argued he did­n’t pay for the chair because he was on the phone and dis­tract­ed after he returned to the store. He has nev­er explained why he did­n’t sim­ply just walk over to the counter and buy the chair pri­or to going out to his car.

Eyman was charged by the City of Lacey with theft the fol­low­ing week.

Eyman ini­tial­ly pled not guilty to the charge.

The max­i­mum penal­ty for the crime Eyman com­mit­ted — a gross mis­de­meanor — is up to one year in jail and a five thou­sand dol­lar fine.

Eyman’s set­tle­ment allows him to avoid jail time, but he was required to pay a fine to set­tle the case, which he did before leav­ing the courthouse.

The terms of the deal stip­u­late that the theft charge will be dis­missed if Eyman stays out of trou­ble (mean­ing, more specif­i­cal­ly, that he does­n’t com­mit anoth­er crime) dur­ing the next nine months. Eyman is also required to stay away from the Lacey Office Depot — but, pre­sum­ably, he can do busi­ness at oth­er Office Depots.

(Records filed with the Unit­ed States Bank­rupt­cy Court for the Dis­trict of West­ern Wash­ing­ton show that Eyman has been mak­ing pur­chas­es at oth­er Office Depot loca­tions with­in the past few weeks, includ­ing in Bellevue.)

Eyman also acknowl­edges the “accu­ra­cy and admis­si­bil­i­ty” of the report of his chair theft pre­pared by the City of Lacey’s police department.

Should Eyman vio­late the terms of the agree­ment, there would be a stip­u­lat­ed facts tri­al, where­in the facts against Eyman would be pre­sent­ed in Thurston Coun­ty Dis­trict Court through the read­ing of the police report by a judge. Eyman would be barred from intro­duc­ing evi­dence of his own or call­ing witnesses.

Eyman remains a defen­dant in the State of Wash­ing­ton’s prin­ci­pal mul­ti-year cam­paign finance enforce­ment law­suit against him and his asso­ciates. He is also work­ing to final­ize his divorce from his wife Karen in Sno­homish County.

Eyman moved out of his Muk­il­teo fam­i­ly home in Decem­ber, accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with the bank­rupt­cy court, and into a con­do in down­town Belle­vue owned by his soon-to-be ex-wife’s sis­ter Car­ol Williams.

Eyman has an ini­tia­tive on the Novem­ber 2019 bal­lot, Ini­tia­tive 976, which would wipe out trans­porta­tion fund­ing at the state, region­al, and local lev­els. The Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling coali­tion (of which NPI is a mem­ber) is work­ing to defeat I‑976. Eyman is also cur­rent­ly try­ing to qual­i­fy a mea­sure to the 2020 Leg­is­la­ture that would slap a one year expi­ra­tion date on future rev­enue reforms. Eyman failed to qual­i­fy an iden­ti­cal mea­sure for the 2019 bal­lot three weeks ago.