Two men with long­time ties to dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman filed a law­suit in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court yes­ter­day against pro­po­nents of Ini­tia­tive 1000 (Wash­ing­ton’s Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion Act) alleg­ing breach of con­tract after hav­ing not been paid for their work on the I‑1000 sig­na­ture dri­ve last year.

Enact­ed by the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture on April 28th, 2019, I‑1000 is on hold until vot­ers decide its fate this Novem­ber. It’s on the bal­lot as Ref­er­en­dum 88. A vote to Approve Ref­er­en­dum 88 is a vote to uphold I‑1000 and a vote to Reject Ref­er­en­dum 88 is a vote to repeal I‑1000 and leave the sta­tus quo in place.

The afore­men­tioned men each con­trol com­pa­nies that are inte­gral to the oper­a­tion of Grover Norquist clone Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive factory.

Roy Ruffi­no of Lacey is the man behind “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions”, the prime con­trac­tor for Eyman’s sig­na­ture dri­ves, while Brent John­son of Spokane, the man behind Your Choice Pet­tions, LLC is one of Ruffi­no’s subcontractors.

Through his com­pa­ny Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, Roy Ruffi­no was sued by the State of Wash­ing­ton as part of its major cam­paign finance enforce­ment law­suit against Tim Eyman. A default judg­ment was recent­ly approved against Cit­i­zen Solu­tions and the State is now seek­ing a penal­ty of more than $1 mil­lion from the firm and the men who con­trol it (Ruffi­no and William Agazarm).

Eyman, mean­while, con­tin­ues to rack up con­tempt sanc­tions for his vio­la­tion of court-issued dis­cov­ery orders ahead of next sum­mer’s trial.

Sub­con­trac­tor Brent John­son is no stranger to trou­ble, either. Accord­ing to a back­ground check obtained by NPI, John­son has been con­vict­ed of a num­ber of crimes, includ­ing… get this… forgery. That’s right, forgery. A con­vict­ed forg­er is one of Wash­ing­ton’s most pro­lif­ic sig­na­ture gath­er­ing crew chiefs.

What could pos­si­bly go wrong?

In this case, Ruffi­no and John­son got burned by inex­plic­a­bly decid­ing to under­take a project for Jesse Wineber­ry, a well-con­nect­ed for­mer state legislator.

That project was Ini­tia­tive 1000.

As I allud­ed to above, I‑1000 was writ­ten to super­sede Tim Eyman’s I‑200, the state’s decades-old ban on affir­ma­tive action, which was adopt­ed in 1998.

Ruffi­no and John­son not only agreed to run the sig­na­ture dri­ve for I‑1000, they agreed to do it on spec. Mean­ing, instead of insist­ing on being pro­vid­ed cash upfront as a con­di­tion of under­tak­ing the dri­ve, they col­lect­ed sig­na­tures based on the promise of future repay­ment, which is pret­ty much unheard of in the industry.

I‑1000 was writ­ten to explic­it­ly per­mit state agen­cies and insti­tu­tions of high­er learn­ing to con­duct out­reach to dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties and his­tor­i­cal­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed groups, while con­tin­u­ing to pro­hib­it the use of quotas.

Nat­u­ral­ly, Tim Eyman is opposed to I‑1000. That’s what makes Ruffi­no and John­son’s involve­ment so strange. Eyman is Ruffi­no’s prin­ci­pal client and I‑200 was the first mea­sure that Eyman spon­sored that made it to the bal­lot and got past the vot­ers. I‑200 is thus very spe­cial to Eyman.

How­ev­er, Eyman has­n’t uttered a word of con­dem­na­tion against Ruffi­no (at least not that we’re aware of) for what would appear to be a major betrayal.

I‑1000 is fierce­ly opposed by Eyman, talk show host John Carl­son (who helmed the I‑200 cam­paign dur­ing its lat­ter stages), and an arch­con­ser­v­a­tive Asian Amer­i­can group disin­gen­u­ous­ly called “WA Asians For Equality”.

Were it not for Ruffi­no and John­son and their crews, I‑1000 would not have qual­i­fied as an ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture ear­li­er this year. Jesse Wineber­ry’s efforts to qual­i­fy a mea­sure to amend I‑200 would have run aground.

Ruffi­no’s lawyer Mark Lamb (who also used to rep­re­sent Eyman) told NPR’s Austin Jenk­ins that Ruffi­no believed Wineber­ry would be good for the mon­ey because three for­mer gov­er­nors (Dan Evans, Gary Locke, and Chris Gre­goire) had endorsed the cam­paign and were serv­ing as its hon­orary co-chairs.

I don’t buy that for a sec­ond. Ruffi­no and John­son are con artists oper­at­ing in a shady, large­ly unreg­u­lat­ed indus­try that runs on cash.

Why on Earth would they agree to do work for a polit­i­cal adver­sary of their pri­ma­ry client who did not pos­sess the mon­ey to pay them?

It’s rather some­thing to wit­ness con men get conned by a con man.

Then again, birds of a feath­er do tend to flock together.

Nine months after Jesse Wineber­ry’s One Equal­i­ty Wash­ing­ton cam­paign turned in sig­na­tures for I‑1000 — an event that fea­tured Ruffi­no — Cit­i­zen Solu­tions and its sub­con­trac­tors have still not been paid in full by Wineber­ry’s operation.

In fact, they’ve bare­ly received any mon­ey from Wineber­ry at all.

Mean­while, Wineber­ry and his group have been spend­ing their lim­it­ed cash on hand on oth­er pri­or­i­ties. Like a tele­vi­sion ad pro­mot­ing I‑1000, which cost sev­er­al thou­sand dol­lars to pro­duce. Or the repeat­ed reim­burse­ment of trav­el expens­es to Wineber­ry — near­ly five thou­sand dol­lars’ worth.

After nine months, with Wineber­ry hav­ing made no appre­cia­ble progress towards retir­ing the debt he owes them, Ruffi­no and John­son have decid­ed to go to court. But they’re not just suing Wineber­ry’s One Equal­i­ty Wash­ing­ton cam­paign. Nope. They’re also going after Wineber­ry’s oth­er I‑1000 com­mit­tee (Approve I‑1000) and the Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness Coali­tion, which Wineber­ry has no involve­ment in.

The Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness Coali­tion is the cam­paign that is com­ing togeth­er in defense of I‑1000 on a pol­i­cy basis, as opposed to defend­ing the cam­paign that qual­i­fied I‑1000 (Wineber­ry’s One Equal­i­ty Wash­ing­ton). The coali­tion has no asso­ci­a­tion with OEW and did not even exist at the time that Ruffi­no agreed to under­take the I‑1000 sig­na­ture dri­ve for Wineber­ry. It’s just sev­er­al weeks old.

Nonethe­less, it is named as a defen­dant in the lawsuit.

Why? Because Ruffi­no and John­son are des­per­ate. They want to be paid per the agree­ment they had with Wineber­ry, but Wineber­ry does­n’t have the mon­ey to pay them, and they know it. So they’re hop­ing to wran­gle mon­ey out of the Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness Coali­tion and its donors instead.

The coali­tion had this to say about the sit­u­a­tion last week, in a state­ment issued on Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 13th, fol­low­ing its Seat­tle kick­off event:

The Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness Cam­paign believes that indi­vid­u­als who gath­ered sig­na­tures for I‑1000 should be com­pen­sat­ed for their work. The per­son respon­si­ble for this pay­ment is their employ­er, Roy Ruffi­no and his com­pa­ny, Cit­i­zen Solu­tions. Our cam­paign lead­er­ship, co-chairs, or donors were not privy to, or sig­na­to­ries to, any fidu­cia­ry arrange­ments includ­ing wages, pay­ment sched­ule, or deficit spend­ing between Mr. Ruffi­no, the sig­na­ture gath­er­ers he hired, and his client.

We stand aligned with any work­ing per­son who deserves to be paid. We urge Roy Ruffi­no and oth­er respon­si­ble par­ties to make good on com­mit­ments made to these con­tract­ed employ­ees. We will remain focused on approval of this impor­tant law for all work­ing people.

The Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness Coali­tion will, I imag­ine, be fil­ing a motion to be dis­missed as a defen­dant from this law­suit rather promptly.

Ruffi­no is in no posi­tion to make good on his com­mit­ments and like­ly would­n’t be even if Wineber­ry sud­den­ly paid him in full. That’s because, as men­tioned, the State of Wash­ing­ton is seek­ing to exact a major penal­ty from him over his com­plic­i­ty in Tim Eyman’s bla­tant vio­la­tions of our pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws.

Here’s the State’s motion to impose a penal­ty on Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, filed in Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court last month.

The State is seek­ing $150,000 from Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, $150,000 from Ruffi­no’s part­ner William Agazarm, and $752,891.97 “joint­ly and sev­er­al­ly” from both defen­dants. That’s over $1 mil­lion in all.

What a tan­gled mess, eh?

Last year, NPI was invit­ed by Jesse Wineber­ry and his asso­ciates to become involved in the effort to qual­i­fy I‑1000. We declined, how­ev­er, owing to our con­cerns about fund­ing and trans­paren­cy — the same con­cerns that prompt­ed oth­er peo­ple Wineber­ry had approached to quit work­ing with him. We did not endorse the cam­paign, gath­er sig­na­tures, or pro­vide resources.

When we found out that Wineber­ry was work­ing with Ruffi­no, we inves­ti­gat­ed and shared our grave con­cerns with oth­er advo­cates for diver­si­ty and inclusion.

At no point did Wineber­ry offer an expla­na­tion for his inde­fen­si­ble deci­sion to do busi­ness with Roy Ruffi­no and Cit­i­zen Solutions.

The trea­sur­er hired by Wineber­ry to han­dle the One Equal­i­ty Com­mit­tee’s books referred our inquiries to Wineber­ry; but Wineber­ry nev­er responded.

After I‑1000 qual­i­fied, we urged the Leg­is­la­ture to adopt the mea­sure, and the House and Sen­ate did so. Now I‑1000 is before vot­ers any­way because it has been sub­ject­ed to a ref­er­en­dum. NPI is urg­ing an “Approved” vote on Ref­er­en­dum 88/Initiative 1000. If you are inter­est­ed in join­ing with us in the effort to uphold Wash­ing­ton’s Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion Act, be sure that your con­tri­bu­tions — whether they be time, tal­ent, or trea­sure — go to the Wash­ing­ton Fair­ness Coali­tion, and not to either of Jesse Wineber­ry’s cam­paign committees.