In his email announcing the poster, Eyman complains:

“Whatever happened to our $30 car tabs?”  We hear it all the time from citizens. Voters have twice approved $30 car tabs and required that anything higher than $30 requires voter approval. It’s what the voters demanded and what the politicians promised (after I-695 was rejected by the courts — Governor Gary Locke said “Regardless of the court’s ruling today, $30 tabs are here to stay.”).

While Initiatives 695 and 776 (which Eyman is referring to) did pass statewide, they both failed in King County. In other words, King County actually voted against $30 car tabs… twice. So, in choosing to raise vehicle fees to save Metro, King County’s leaders were actually not only taking a just and moral action to protect a vital public service, they were respecting the will of the people they represent.

(Initiative 695, on the ballot in 1999, failed in King County by a vote of 53.34% to 46.66%. Initiative 776, on the ballot in 2002, failed in King County by a vote of 59.57% to 40.43%. Neither outcome was close).

See, Tim delights in creating chaos. Making messes. Wrecking government so it can’t work like it’s supposed to. So, when he sees public officials teaming together to navigate around land mines planted by him or his sympathizers, it makes him upset. Very upset. He tends to lose his cool and lash out.

Today was no exception.

Eyman’s fury was directed in particular towards the two Republican councilmembers who signed on to the agreement announced today by Executive Dow Constantine to save Metro: Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert. Both represent broad swaths of the Eastside, and both had been fiercely lobbied by Metro riders to support raising vehicle fees to offset painful cuts to service.

Eyman, who first gained notoriety for trying to slash vehicle fees statewide, had previously praised both for indicating they would not join Democrats in voting to save Metro. But today, he was harshly vilifying them with a special scorn he usually reserves for progressive Democrats.

The subject line of Eyman’s email alone was a doozy. It read:

RE: Hague & Lambert flip-flop for lollipops — 2 King County Republicans cut a deal with Dow, screwing us out of our $30 car tabs in exchange for earmarked pork — worse, they’ve lied about it for months.

The first-person plural reference is pretty cute. Eyman acts as if he lives in King County. But he doesn’t. He likes in Mukilteo, which is part of Snohomish County. That means he won’t have to pay the higher vehicle fees. So why should he care? Well, here’s one reason: Both of his top two all-time wealthy benefactors (Michael Dunmire and Kemper Freeman Jr.) live in King County.

Perhaps he feels that he must be publicly enraged on their behalf.

The body of the Mukilteo profiteer’s message basically accused Hague and Lambert of behaving like, well… Tim Eyman.

[T]hey’ve been lying for months.  They lied to the media, lied to constituents, lied to all of you.  It’s totally sleazy under any circumstances — ignoring the voters’ ballot box mandate — but it’s beyond the pale to sell their council votes in exchange for pork barrel earmarks.

The agreement to save Metro doesn’t actually include any earmarks… in fact, it dispenses with the 40/40/20 formula that used to benefit the Eastside at Seattle’s expense. But of course, Tim Eyman doesn’t care about the details. What he cares about is that two Republicans are cooperating with some Democrats to save a vital public service. Instead of showing fealty to him and his uncompromising ideology of destruction, they’re listening to their constituents. And that’s a no-no.

In his latest missive, copied to the media, Eyman writes:

Over the past 11 years, we’ve sponsored 4 initiatives to reduce car tab taxes and voters got to vote on two of them:  both were overwhelmingly approved by the voters.

Eyman doesn’t name those two, but he’s talking about Inititative 695 in 1999 and Initiative 776 in 2002.

I-695 passed with 56% of the vote. If that’s overwhelming, than each defeat that Eyman has suffered at the ballot box is beyond overwhelming: I-745 was rejected in 2000 with 59.34% of the vote, I-894 was rejected in 2004 with 61.54% of the vote, I-985 was rejected in 2008 by 59.99% of the vote, and I-1033 is being rejected by 57%. And there’s a noteworthy factoid right there: No Eyman initiative has ever passed by a greater margin than any of his four defeats at the ballot.

There’s no question that I-695 passed handily. People felt the motor vehicle excise tax had gotten too high and was being collected unfairly. Presented with Tim Eyman’s all-or-nothing choice, a majority opted for nothing, not recognizing the consequences of this course of action.

But let’s look at 2002′s Initiative 776, which was on the ballot three years after I-695. I-776 passed with only 51.47% of the vote, which is hardly “overwhelming”. It is worth remembering that Initiative 776 sought to repeal vehicle fees that were only levied in four counties: King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Douglas. I-776 actually failed within King County and the Sound Transit taxing district as a whole, which spans the most urban part of King, Snohomish, and Pierce.

Even voters in Kitsap County, who were voting on vehicle fees that didn’t affect them, turned I-776 down, perhaps because they had witnessed better than anyone the consequences of I-695.

Considering his many losses and failures, Eyman should know better than anyone that voters are nuanced. If the case for preserving existing revenue or raising revenue is effectively made, people tend to vote prudently with an eye towards the future. If people can’t see the connection between their tax dollars and the services provided, they tend to be skeptical. That explains the failure of two propositions in Burien and Bremerton to raise vehicle fees.

Eyman cites this as evidence that people hate vehicle fees, but he’s being misleading… again. Surveys, such as the one Sound Transit conducted in 2007 after the failure of “Roads and Transit”, suggest people are willing to pay vehicle fees if the fees go towards services and projects that they support.

In some jurisdictions, like Seattle, levies get readily approved because people there are very concious about wanting to live in a place with a great quality of life. Elsewhere, however, people expect the case to be made to them in a campaign, and if it isn’t, they tend to be opposed in lopsided numbers. Just ask the people who run rural library districts or school districts.

This is one of the drawbacks of “budgeting by referendum”: it requires elected officials and concerned citizens to always be in campaign mode, defending the common wealth from erosion and destruction.

In an article published in the Everett Herald yesterday, the story of the struggling town of Gold Bar is told. Ever since the passage of Initiative 695 in 1999, Gold Bar has been in trouble. And now, the city is in danger of having to disincorporate.

The city’s troubles are indeed the result of Eyman initiatives, as the article notes:

The reason Gold Bar and numerous other cities around the state are struggling financially can be traced to the passage of the car tab initiative in 1999, which lowered licensing fees to a flat $30 rate.

Since then, Gold Bar has lost about $707,000 in revenue, according to the Association of Washington Cities. That loss is bigger than the city’s 2005 general fund of about $508,000. The city already has tightened its belt, cutting expenses on staff training, laying off staff and restructuring the police service contract with the county, which has saved the city about $194,000, said Hester Gilleland, the city’s clerk and treasurer.

The sad reality is that cities need money to operate. It costs us money to live in a society – something that Tim Eyman has never been intelligent enough to recognize. There comes a point when there is simply nothing left to cut and no belt-tightening left to do: the government simply stops functioning.

Public services, such as police and fire protection, swimming pools and libraries, roads, parks and public schools – aren’t free. Without money to operate those services, the government has no choice but to stop providing them. This seriously endangers the health of Washington state’s communities.

Gold Bar is unfortunately at the end of its string. But the city’s residents haven’t got anybody to blame except themselves.

Hawkins [mayor of Gold Bar] said she finds it ironic that even she voted for Initiative 695 – the major cause of the city’s financial headaches.

The town’s registered voters supported the initiative by a vote of 354-138. Courts eventually struck down the measure, but state lawmakers heeded the will of the people and adopted $30 license tab fees anyway.

In 2002, voters approved a second car-tab initiative, which eliminated a $15 license registration fee that Snohomish County and several other counties had been charging.

That money was earmarked for street repairs. As a result, the street fund in Gold Bar dropped from $17,200 in 2002 to nothing in 2004, Gilleland said.

“Even though these initiatives are appealing, they are giving a death warrant for local government,” Hawkins said.

Voters have been tricked into voting with their pocketbooks thanks to Tim Eyman and his sadistic rhetoric. Even mayors have been sold on the premise that they can have it all and not pay for it. By refusing to look at both sides of the equation, and refusing to acknowledge that tax cuts are equivalent to cuts in public services, Eyman and his cronies have distorted the truth and caused a lot of damage.

The Republican position that we must “live within our means” may sound appealing, but it is insane. Too many years of tax cuts are wreaking havoc on Washington State and its many local governments. If something isn’t done in the next few years, city halls across the state will be forced to close and some counties may even collapse into insolvency.

At a time when many rural citizens are angry about the lack of local control in their quest for “property rights”, they risk losing out and ceding more power to officials that are further away. Many of these people are the same folks that eagerly embraced Tim Eyman’s initiatives.

You get what you vote for, and they will pay dearly for their lack of vision and their self-centered thinking. If they’re upset about losing local control, then they should join the bandwagon in clamoring for the state Legislature to pass a budget that will plug the deficit with new revenues.

Cities and counties need money to operate. They’re out of funding. Without the state’s help or increased local revenue, there is no hope for them. And the state cannot possibly provide them funding when it faces its own budget shortfall.

It’s time for people who have been avoiding reality to acknowledge it. We cannot afford any more tax cuts. We need new revenues and real tax reform. We must fund public services or be forced to stop providing them.

I live in Kitsap County and Eyman’s antics have thoroughly disrupted my life. I commuted by ferry to Seattle, so I was very dependent on transit to get me from my home to the Kingston ferry.

When the car tabs initiative passed [I-695] ,I lost my bus route, so I had to drive 16 miles to the ferry terminal and pay an additional 50.00 a month for parking, then the ferry fares jumped dramatically.

I then lost my job in Seattle because I couldn’t get a bus to my office on time and the transit times were cut. All around Tim Eyman’s initiatives wrecked my job and my lifestyle. There still is no bus route in my area and I wonder what the elderly and school age kids do if they don’t have a car.

This is one of many examples of damage resulting from Tim Eyman’s initiatives. I-695 has hurt many people. Yet most conservatives are oblivious to this. They, of all people, should know, yet they continue to support Eyman’s ridiculous anti-tax rhetoric. Have they failed to notice that ferry fares have skyrocketed since the 1990s?

In part, that’s due to the recession, but the implementation of Tim Eyman’s I-695 is primarily to blame.

We have a simple message for our fellow Washingtonians: Don’t let Eyman get away with wrecking your life. Don’t let a fraternity watchmaker from Mukilteo dictate our government’s money flow.

Decline to sign Initiative 807.