As Tim Eyman’s personal income falls, State of Washington asks judge to force him to pay up

Tim Eyman is get­ting squeezed on the mon­ey front. Big time.

The lat­est month­ly finan­cial report filed by the dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er with the Unit­ed States Bank­rupt­cy Court for the West­ern Dis­trict of Wash­ing­ton (for the month of June 2019) shows that for the fourth con­sec­u­tive month, Eyman’s receipts have declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly, while his expens­es have not.

At the same time, the State of Wash­ing­ton is mak­ing an attempt to col­lect the civ­il con­tempt penal­ties that Eyman has been busy rack­ing up in the main cam­paign finance enforce­ment law­suit the State filed against him and his associates.

Last Fri­day, the State moved for an order find­ing that the Eyman Defen­dants (Tim Eyman and his now defunct com­pa­ny “Watch­dog for Tax­pay­ers, LLC”) be held “joint­ly and sev­er­al­ly respon­si­ble for the con­tempt fines imposed against Eyman Defen­dants col­lec­tive­ly as well as those imposed against Watch­dog alone.”

To ensure the order has teeth, the State wants Eyman to be required to pay up with­in five days of the date of the order. From the state’s motion:

“The State fur­ther requests that the order require the Eyman Defen­dants to pay those con­tempt fines accrued to date with­in five days of the date of the order. Final­ly, the State requests that the Court award the State its fees and costs against the Eyman Defen­dants joint­ly and sev­er­al­ly for hav­ing to bring this motion.”

The con­tempt fines Eyman owes through August 2nd, 2019 (tomor­row) total $155,500, accord­ing to the State’s motion. That’s the grand total for all defen­dants in the case, includ­ing Eyman per­son­al­ly and his LLC. Court costs and attor­ney’s fees will be extra, so Eyman will owe even more on top of that.

I have no doubt Tim Eyman’s response to this motion will be to whine about how he’s being per­se­cut­ed and unfair­ly treat­ed. The real­i­ty, though, is that Eyman dug him­self into this hole by mak­ing stonewalling in the extreme his legal defense strat­e­gy. Again and again he has test­ed the patience of Judge James Dixon and retired Judge Gary Tabor, the spe­cial mas­ter over­see­ing dis­cov­ery mat­ters, in his des­per­ate attempt to evade account­abil­i­ty for his lawbreaking.

Judge Dixon is sched­uled to hear oral argu­ments on this motion tomor­row morn­ing at 9 AM in Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court. As Eyman has cho­sen to rep­re­sent him­self, at least for the time being, he will have to appear in court to present argu­ments against the motion on his own behalf.

Although Eyman is a pro se defen­dant in State of Wash­ing­ton v. Tim Eyman, he still has big legal bills to pay, and that’s because of his bank­rupt­cy case before Judge Marc Bar­reca, which is being han­dled for him by Vort­man & Feinstein.

Last month, Eyman paid his bank­rupt­cy attor­neys $34,319.32 for their work — fees which were approved by Bar­reca. That caused his month­ly expens­es for June 2019 to top $50,000, while his report­ed income was a mere $6,633.56.

That might sound like a lot, but it pales in com­par­i­son to pre­vi­ous months.

Pri­or to Eyman’s now-infa­mous chair theft in Feb­ru­ary, his income was over $25,000 a month. But since then, it appears his friends have become few­er in num­ber and less gen­er­ous. His expens­es and lia­bil­i­ties, how­ev­er, just con­tin­ue to mount. It looks like his finan­cial sit­u­a­tion is becom­ing extreme­ly precarious.

Eyman’s obses­sion with post­pon­ing his day of reck­on­ing has caused the wheels of jus­tice to grind very slow­ly. But they are grind­ing nonethe­less. We will let you know how Judge Dixon rules on this motion for pay­ment of con­tempt fines tomorrow.