Tim Eyman is apparently unaware that Thurston County’s Intercity Transit is also a plaintiff suing to invalidate Initiative 976

On Fri­day, Tim Eyman announced his lat­est legal shenani­gan: a law­suit to be filed in Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court tomor­row morn­ing which will pre­sum­ably request that the courts there side with Eyman in try­ing to move the legal chal­lenge against Eyman’s I‑976 out of King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, where it was orig­i­nal­ly filed and where it remains an action in progress today.

I haven’t yet seen a copy of what­ev­er com­plaint Eyman is lodg­ing with the court, so I don’t know what relief he and who­ev­er made the mis­take of agree­ing to rep­re­sent him are going for, but based on Eyman’s post­ings to social media, it sounds like a rather lame attempt to secure a change of venue.

Here’s Eyman (the below is from a Face­book screed):

AG [Attor­ney Gen­er­al] Bob Fer­gu­son pur­pose­ly sab­o­taged I‑976 by refus­ing to file change of venue motion, leav­ing it stuck with a King Coun­ty judge in King Coun­ty which is the plain­tiff! I told [Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al Noah Pur­cell] that day in court: “You blew it. You absolute­ly blew it.” He replied “You should be thank­ing us.”

For what? For tak­ing away our democ­ra­cy? For block­ing our $30 tabs? For under­min­ing people’s faith that their vote counts?

I stood up in court that day and addressed the judge: “Your Hon­or, the AG has done a hor­ri­ble job defend­ing I‑976. You had ques­tions that the AG didn’t answer. Let me answer them.”

Judge wouldn’t listen.

Let’s see if a judge in a non-plain­tiff coun­ty will listen.

If Tim is seri­ous about want­i­ng a judge in a “non-plain­tiff coun­ty” to lis­ten to him, then he should not have picked Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court as a venue for this law­suit he has planned, because Thurston Coun­ty’s Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit is among the plain­tiffs suing to inval­i­date Ini­tia­tive 976. 

See for your­self. Here’s a cur­rent list of all the par­ties in the case that is pend­ing in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, as of Fri­day, Decem­ber 13th.

GARFIELD COUNTY TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY; KING COUNTY; CITY OF SEATTLE; WASHINGTON STATE TRANSIT ASSOCIATION; ASSOCIATION  OF WASHINGTON CITIES; PORT OF SEATTLE; INTERCITY TRANSIT; AMALGAMATED TRANSIT UNION LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF WASHINGTON; and MICHAEL ROGERS,

Plain­tiffs,

and

WASHINGTON ADAPT,

Inter­venor-Plain­tiff,

v.

STATE OF WASHINGTON,

Defen­dant,

and

CLINT DIDIER; PERMANENT OFFENSE, TIMOTHY D. EYMAN, MICHAEL FAGAN; JACK FAGAN; and PIERCE COUNTY,

Inter­venor-Defen­­dants.

Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit is a munic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion which is con­trolled by Thurston Coun­ty and its largest cities. Thurston Coun­ty is thus indi­rect­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the law­suit against Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 976. And by Eyman’s log­ic, that means Thurston Coun­ty is not an appro­pri­ate venue for I‑976’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty to be decided.

From Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit’s web­site:

Who Gov­erns Inter­ci­ty Transit?

Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit is gov­erned by a nine-mem­ber Board of Direc­tors, the Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit Author­i­ty. The Author­i­ty con­sists of five elect­ed offi­cials who rep­re­sent the Thurston Coun­ty Board of Com­mis­sion­ers and the Cities of Lacey, Tumwa­ter, Olympia, and Yelm.

Three mem­bers are Cit­i­zen Rep­re­sen­ta­tives appoint­ed by the Board, and one mem­ber is a labor representative.

Except for the labor rep­re­sen­ta­tive, board mem­bers rep­re­sent, and must live in, the pub­lic trans­porta­tion ben­e­fit area. A Cit­i­zen Rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s term is three years, and the elect­ed offi­cials serve at the plea­sure of their respec­tive may­ors and Commissioners.

The Author­i­ty sets pol­i­cy and direc­tion for the agency.

The cur­rent Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit board­mem­bers are:

• Yelm Coun­cilmem­ber Mol­ly Carmody
• Lacey Coun­cilmem­ber Car­olyn Cox
• Olympia Coun­cilmem­ber Clark Gilman
• Thurston Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Tye Menser
• Tumwa­ter Coun­cilmem­ber Deb­bie Sullivan
• Cit­i­zen Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ryan Warner
• Cit­i­zen Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Karen Messmer
• Cit­i­zen Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Don Melnick
• Labor Rep­re­sen­ta­tive David Claus-Sharwark

As you can see, one of the three Thurston Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers even sits on the board of Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit. I.T. is arguably just an exten­sion of the gov­ern­ment of Thurston Coun­ty, which hilar­i­ous­ly, is where Eyman claims that he wants this case moved to in order to get a judge in a “non-plain­tiff coun­ty” to lis­ten to him.

These facts rein­force just how ridicu­lous and absurd Tim Eyman’s argu­ments are.

As I’ve pre­vi­ous­ly explained here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, if you go by Eyman’s log­ic, then no court in the state is a suit­able venue for the I‑976 legal chal­lenge because all the judges draw salaries from one or more of the parties.

The State is a defen­dant in this case and it pays the Supreme Court jus­tices and half of the salaries of the judges of the King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court. The judges in Pierce Coun­ty, mean­while, draw all of their pay from the defen­dants, just like the jus­tices, because Pierce Coun­ty has inter­vened in the case as a defendant.

It actu­al­ly does not mat­ter which tax­pay­ers are pay­ing which judges because the judi­cia­ry is a sep­a­rate and equal branch of our gov­ern­ment. There is no con­flict of inter­est in the Ini­tia­tive 976 case. Judges swear an oath to uphold the Con­sti­tu­tion, not a loy­al­ty oath to the gov­er­nor who may have appoint­ed them.

(Judge­ships in Wash­ing­ton are elect­ed posi­tions, but the respon­si­bil­i­ty of fill­ing vacan­cies falls to the Gov­er­nor, cur­rent­ly Jay Inslee, who Eyman despises.)

Eyman’s choice of Thurston Coun­ty seems even more strange con­sid­er­ing that not only is Thurston Coun­ty’s Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit a plain­tiff in the legal chal­lenge to I‑976, but Thurston Coun­ty vot­ers reject­ed Ini­tia­tive 976 last month.

Plus… Thurston Coun­ty is where Eyman is defend­ing him­self against a long-run­ning cam­paign finance enforce­ment law­suit filed by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, which alleges that Eyman com­mit­ted egre­gious vio­la­tions of Wash­ing­ton State’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws. Eyman has repeat­ed­ly been held in con­tempt of court by a Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge (James Dixon) for fail­ing to com­ply with court-approved dis­cov­ery orders in that case.

Giv­en all that, why file this action — or stunt — in Thurston Coun­ty? Why not, say, Fer­ry Coun­ty, or Stevens Coun­ty, where I‑976 over­whelm­ing­ly passed?

I think it’s because Eyman’s real goal here is not go judge shop­ping for a legal action that he expects to suc­ceed, but rather to score more media coverage.

The Thurston Coun­ty Cour­t­house, which offers a panoram­ic view of Budd Inlet, is an easy dri­ve for what remains of Wash­ing­ton’s cap­i­tal press corps and the South Sound bureau reporters who work for Seat­tle’s four broad­cast tele­vi­sion sta­tions. The towns of Repub­lic and Colville, on the oth­er hand, would not be.

Eyman knows this. He has an insa­tiable appetite for atten­tion. When he’s not hold­ing forth in front of the cam­eras, he is plan­ning his next press event.

No news will be made tomor­row at the “ral­ly” that Eyman has planned; there is no rea­son for any reporter to both­er attend­ing, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Eyman will prob­a­bly livestream the whole thing to his Face­book page. It will thus be pos­si­ble to watch the spec­ta­cle with­out being there in person.

I imag­ine that what­ev­er is being filed tomor­row will be dis­missed fair­ly quick­ly, like the ridicu­lous law­suit Eyman pal Stephen Pid­geon filed with the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court ear­ly this month, which was laughed out of court.

The case against I‑976 was prop­er­ly brought in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court. I can’t see any Thurston Coun­ty judge agree­ing to ignore the laws and the Con­sti­tu­tion of the State of Wash­ing­ton just to pla­cate a lying con artist who is mad that his lat­est con (Ini­tia­tive 976) isn’t hold­ing up to judi­cial scrutiny.