NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Friday, October 29th, 2021

Tim Eyman isn’t making his required monthly payments, so the State of Washington wants a Chapter 11 trustee to be appointed

Con­vict­ed chair thief and ser­i­al pub­lic dis­clo­sure law offend­er Tim Eyman isn’t abid­ing by his agree­ment to make $10,000 month­ly install­ment pay­ments to the peo­ple of the State of Wash­ing­ton, so Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office is mov­ing to have a Chap­ter 11 trustee appoint­ed to over­see his estate, accord­ing to new­ly filed fed­er­al court doc­u­ments scru­ti­nized by NPI.

In a plead­ing dat­ed yes­ter­day, attor­neys for the state noti­fied the Unit­ed States Bank­rupt­cy Court for the West­ern Dis­trict of Wash­ing­ton that they haven’t received pay­ments from Eyman for either this month or the last month and that their most recent mes­sages to Eyman and his coun­sel have been unreturned.

Eyman was sup­posed to make $10,000 pay­ments by Sep­tem­ber 15th and Octo­ber 15th as required by Sec­tion 6.09 of his court-approved bank­rupt­cy plan. 

Eyman will offi­cial­ly be in default as of tomor­row (Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 30th) if he does­n’t pro­vide the $10,000 Sep­tem­ber pay­ment that he owes.

In antic­i­pa­tion of that hap­pen­ing, the State is ask­ing Judge Marc Bar­reca to appoint a Chap­ter 11 trustee to over­see Eyman’s estate.

“Debtor Eyman’s unwill­ing­ness to be trans­par­ent in his finan­cial deal­ings and his deci­sion to sim­ply stop mak­ing pay­ments with­out expla­na­tion requires appoint­ment of a trustee,” the State argued.

“It is in the inter­ests of the cred­i­tors to have a trustee man­age the estate, deter­mine the rea­son for Debtor Eyman’s fail­ure to make the required pay­ments when his last quar­ter­ly report­ing estab­lish­es that he has the funds to make these pay­ments, and if nec­es­sary, dis­trib­ut­ing assets.”

The State is also ask­ing Bar­reca to be allowed to “record and per­fect the judg­ment entered in State v. Eyman, Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, Case No. 17–2‑01546–34, in Sno­homish and King Counties.”

The afore­men­tioned court case is the main civ­il law­suit against Tim Eyman for his bla­tant vio­la­tions of Chap­ter 42.17A RCW, the Fair Cam­paign Prac­tices Act. Eyman was found guilty of hav­ing vio­lat­ed the FCPA ear­li­er this year by Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge James Dixon and ordered to pay a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar fine.

Sno­homish Coun­ty is where Eyman has resided for most of the last twen­ty years; King Coun­ty is where he now resides fol­low­ing his sep­a­ra­tion from Karen Eyman.

Karen Eyman recent­ly made her own fil­ing with the Unit­ed States Bank­rupt­cy Court, in which she request­ed relief from a stay to final­ize her divorce from Tim.

In an Octo­ber 6th dec­la­ra­tion, Karen Eyman explained to Judge Bar­reca that until recent­ly, she has been unrep­re­sent­ed by her own coun­sel, and that Tim has been string­ing her along and drag­ging out the divorce proceedings.

Specif­i­cal­ly, she said: “My soon-to-be ex-hus­band told me time and time again that it would hap­pen any day and that it was being held up because of one issue or anoth­er with the bank­rupt­cy and/or the prop­er­ty. I was com­plete­ly unrep­re­sent­ed in this pro­ceed­ing and in Tim’s bank­rupt­cy proceeding.”

Tim Eyman announced in Novem­ber of 2018 (almost three years ago) that he was fil­ing for bank­rupt­cy and divorce. At the time, he was not actu­al­ly bank­rupt, but was attempt­ing to throw a mon­key wrench into Bob Fer­gu­son’s efforts to hold him account­able for vio­lat­ing the Fair Cam­paign Prac­tices Act.

When that scheme failed, Eyman tried to have the bank­rupt­cy case dis­missed. But Judge Bar­reca wise­ly refused to dis­miss the case. Now Eyman real­ly is bank­rupt, and is appar­ent­ly so low on funds that he can’t make his required month­ly pay­ments. The last reg­u­lar report Eyman sub­mit­ted was filed months ago, so we don’t know what his cur­rent cash posi­tion is, but it can’t be good.

The State’s fil­ing describes recent events as follows:

The State made every effort to con­firm that Debtor Eyman made the Sep­tem­ber pay­ment. On Sep­tem­ber 13, 2021, State’s coun­sel emailed Debtor Eyman’s coun­sel to con­firm the month­ly trans­fer was made to the claims reserve account and the Sep­tem­ber check would be  mailed to the State. On Sep­tem­ber 17, State’s coun­sel again sought to con­firm this information. 

On Sep­tem­ber 22, 2021, when the State had still not received the check, State’s coun­sel sent a fol­low up email.

On Sep­tem­ber 23, 2021, Debtor’s coun­sel for­ward­ed a pho­to of a check and a stamped enve­lope that was addressed to the State, but with no post­mark. The check has nev­er been received.

On Sep­tem­ber 30, 2021, the State issued a Notice of Default under Sec­tion 9.01 of the Plan’s default pro­vi­sion. Debtor Eyman was giv­en 30 days to cure default, which expires on Octo­ber 30, 2021.

Since issu­ing this notice of default, the State has not been con­tact­ed by the Debtor or his coun­sel. Debtor Eyman has also failed to file his post-con­fir­ma­tion report that was due on Octo­ber 21, 2021.

These recent events are all part of a long pat­tern of des­per­ate obfus­ca­tion and stonewalling by Eyman. He is always try­ing to buy him­self more time in the hopes of being able to skate away from his problems.

Fake it till you make it could be his per­son­al motto.

Though his mis­er­able cir­cum­stances are entire­ly of his own mak­ing, Eyman con­stant­ly por­trays him­self in pub­lic as the vic­tim of a railroad.

Eyman’s favorite foil nowa­days is Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son, who has refused to allow Eyman to wrig­gle out of being held accountable.

Although Eyman’s anger is mis­placed, it is under­stand­able, because Eyman has tried real­ly, real­ly, real­ly hard through a long series of machi­na­tions and manip­u­la­tions to dodge account­abil­i­ty for his past behavior.

With no sym­pa­thet­ic Repub­li­can gov­er­nor and no Repub­li­can attor­ney gen­er­al avail­able to let him off the hook he put him­self on, Eyman seems trapped in a down­ward spi­ral. He has been unable to restart his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry and the finan­cial gifts he reg­u­lar­ly asks for from his friends have not been suf­fi­cient to allow him to con­tin­ue to live his high-expense lifestyle while pay­ing his debts.

A trustee prob­a­bly should have been appoint­ed in this bank­rupt­cy case months ago, but Judge Bar­reca kind­ly decid­ed to let Eyman have a go at car­ry­ing out his oblig­a­tions under the terms of his bank­rupt­cy plan. Eyman has seem­ing­ly now blown that chance. So it’s time for a trustee to step in and sal­vage what’s left of the com­plete and total mess that Eyman has made of his estate.

A copy of the State’s fil­ing is below if you’d like to read it yourself.

Tim Eyman in default: State requests trustee

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