Visualize how Tim Eyman’s I‑976 would harm Washington with our new I‑976 Impact Map

Eigh­teen months ago, our team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute began work­ing to orga­nize oppo­si­tion to Tim Eyman’s I‑976, a mea­sure cur­rent­ly before Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers that would wipe out bil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing for bipar­ti­san, vot­er-approved trans­porta­tion investments.

At that time, I‑976 was­n’t real­ly on any­body else’s radar. Eyman had­n’t qual­i­fied any­thing for the bal­lot in years. But we could see that Eyman had strung togeth­er enough funds to hire sig­na­ture gath­er­ers, and we assessed I‑976 would like­ly qual­i­fy for the bal­lot. So we began work­ing to defeat the measure.

We knew at the out­set that stop­ping I‑976 would­n’t be easy. Eyman is a cun­ning snake oil sales­man with a gift for manip­u­lat­ing oth­er peo­ple. Eyman mea­sures are decep­tive­ly allur­ing schemes that promise vot­ers what amounts to a myth­i­cal free lunch: low­er tax­es with no con­se­quences whatsoever.

In the real world, there are two sides to every equa­tion. Mon­ey does­n’t grow on trees. Things worth hav­ing that ben­e­fit all of us, likes roads and bridges, or parks and schools, cost mon­ey. Tax­es are how we raise the mon­ey to pay for those things. Tax­es are real­ly mem­ber­ship dues in our state and coun­try. With­out tax­es, soci­ety as we know it would­n’t exist. Civ­i­liza­tion would­n’t exist.

In the past, oppo­si­tion cam­paigns to many of Eyman’s ini­tia­tives have not done a very good job of spelling out the costs and the con­se­quences for vot­ers, allow­ing Eyman to essen­tial­ly win by default. We did­n’t want that to hap­pen this time around, so we’ve been work­ing tire­less­ly to cre­ate and sus­tain a pub­lic dia­logue about the destruc­tive impacts of Eyman’s lat­est mea­sure, I‑976.

Today, in sup­port of that goal of cre­at­ing pub­lic dia­logue about the harms I‑976 would inflict, we’re excit­ed to announce the release of our Ini­tia­tive 976 Impact Map. This first-of-its kind vot­er aid was cre­at­ed to allow Wash­ing­to­ni­ans to visu­al­ize poten­tial cuts to already-approved projects and ser­vices that we’re count­ing on to expand free­dom of mobil­i­ty for both peo­ple and goods.

Take a look:

The best way to view the map is in full screen mode. Tap or click the but­ton with the four arrows to expand the map so it tem­porar­i­ly fills your screen.

Designed by the tal­ent­ed Oran Viriy­in­cy in part­ner­ship with our team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, this unique large for­mat col­or map uses ele­ments from com­mon road signs to con­vey how Wash­ing­ton is threat­ened by I‑976.

Exam­ples are fur­ther illus­trat­ed with a series of cap­tioned pho­tographs that sur­round the map at its perime­ter. Many of the pho­tos are from NPI’s image library, and were tak­en by North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute staff.

As this map is a project of NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense PAC, we’ve set up a page over at Per­ma­nent Defense’s site with a guide to how to make use of the map, includ­ing a break­down of the assump­tions under­pin­ning our assess­ment of the risks to our bipar­ti­san, vot­er-approved trans­porta­tion invest­ments from I‑976.

We unveiled the map to the pub­lic and the press this morn­ing with events at Auburn Sta­tion in South King Coun­ty and King Street Sta­tion in Seattle.

At Auburn Sta­tion, we gave com­muters trav­el­ing through the city’s mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion hub an oppor­tu­ni­ty to inspect the map and take a brochure that makes the case for vot­ing NO by Novem­ber 5th.

And at King Street Sta­tion, we held a press con­fer­ence to intro­duce the map to our state’s mass media out­lets. We were hon­ored to be joined by rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Sier­ra Club, All Aboard Wash­ing­ton, Tran­sit Rid­ers Union, 500 Women Sci­en­tists, and Seat­tle Neigh­bor­hood Greenways.

From now until Novem­ber 5th, the I‑976 Impact Map will be on tour, as NPI and allies work to equip vot­ers with the infor­ma­tion they need to cast a respon­si­ble, informed vote on this destruc­tive measure.

If you would like to help with the tour, please con­tact us to inquire about get­ting a large for­mat copy of the map. The print­ed ver­sion of the map is avail­able in two dif­fer­ent sizes. One is suit­able for dis­play on easels and the oth­er is suit­able for car­ry­ing around or perus­ing on a tabletop.

We hope you enjoy look­ing at the map as much as we enjoyed putting it togeth­er. Remem­ber to vote NO on Tim Eyman’s I‑976 by Novem­ber 5th!