Category Archives: Rethinking and Reframing

January 9th, 2014

I-1325 would contravene the Supreme Court’s McCleary decision

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & AdvisoriesThreat Analysis

Today, while Tim Eyman was busy trying to generate more publicity for his latest initiative by confronting House Speaker Frank Chopp in the statehouse, the Washington State Supreme Court ordered the State of Washington to submit, no later than April 30th, 2014, a “complete plan for fully implementing its program of basic education for each school year between now and the 2017-2018 school year.”

The order, signed by eight of the Court’s nine justices, also states (PDF):

This plan must address each of the areas of K-12 education identified in ESHB 2261, as well as the implementation plan called for by SHB 2776, and must include a phase-in schedule for fully funding each of the components of basic education. We recognize that the April 30, 2014 shortens the time for the State’s report, but it is clear that the pace of progress must quicken.

“Tim Eyman’s latest initiative violates Article IX of the Washington State Constitution by eliminating $1 billion a year in funding for education and our other vital public services if the Legislature doesn’t do what Tim wants,” said NPI founder and executive director Andrew Villeneuve.

“The Supreme Court was crystal clear in the original McCleary ruling two years ago, and again today: We are not fulfilling our paramount duty of providing every child in Washington with a quality public education. That’s because we are underfunding our schools. Tim Eyman’s I-1325 would make a bad problem much, much worse. It’s coercion: either the Legislature sabotages our cherished tradition of majority rule by voting to adopt a constitutional amendment that gives one third of one house the power to block new revenue, or the sales tax is reduced, wiping out billions every biennium. Either outcome would almost certainly lead to further violations of the state Supreme Court’s order.”

The sales tax and the property tax are the principal sources of revenue for Washington’s K-12 schools. Saying that full funding is needed “now”, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn’s office is proposing legislation that would trigger a one percent increase in the sales tax if the Legislature does not figure out how to comply with the McCleary decision by January 1st, 2018. (Eyman’s initiative, as mentioned, would decrease the sales tax by one percent unless Eyman gets what he wants).

“Tim Eyman and a number of Republican lawmakers would like us all to believe we can fully fund our public schools without reforming our broken, regressive tax system,” said Villeneuve.

“If it were that easy, we would have done it already. Where’s that money going to come from? What services do these guys propose defunding so we can rob Peter to pay Paul? Should we gut foster care? Eliminate state support for the disabled and mentally ill? Set all prisoners free and close the Department of Corrections? Or do Eyman and Republican legislators think we can get the funds by planting money trees?”

“We are not going to solve this problem by having this debate in a fantasy world. Arithmetic matters. The reality is, public services cost money, and it is our collective responsibility as a people to ensure our youth get a good public education. Our highest law requires it. More importantly, it’s at the heart of what we believe as Washingtonians. These are our values. We made a promise to our kids and to ourselves when our forebears ratified our Constitution. Tim Eyman would have us ignore that obligation. His toxic politics and destructive initiatives should be rejected.”

October 30th, 2013

Tim Eyman’s “advisory votes” are really costly, deceptive, and unconstitutional push polls

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & AdvisoriesThreat Analysis

NPI’s Permanent Defense today released a new critical analysis of the “advisory votes” required by Tim Eyman’s Initiative 960.

Titled “Tim Eyman’s “advisory votes” are really costly, deceptive, and unconstitutional push polls“, it explains that the five “advisory votes” on this year’s ballot are an expensive sham intended to maliciously influence voters, not provide our state’s elected leaders with any useful feedback about the state budget.

“We have begun calling these advisory votes push polls, because that is what they really are,” said Northwest Progressive Institute founder Andrew Villeneuve, who has been organizing opposition to Tim Eyman’s initiatives for nearly twelve years.

“Like all push polls, Eyman’s advisory votes consist of loaded questions that suggest their own responses. Regardless of what the outcome of these five votes are, Eyman has already won, because he has succeeded in cluttering up the front side of every Washingtonian’s ballot with his false ‘government is oppressing you and overtaxing you’ message. Where is the counterpoint? Where is the context?”

“It’s not there. It’s not even in the voter’s pamphlet; I-960 forbids it. The taxpayers of this state are unknowingly paying for Tim Eyman’s propaganda to be marketed to them. It’s ridiculous.”

“In computing, there’s a saying I like: Garbage in, garbage out. What this means is, if you put bad data into a computer program, it will spit bad results out. The computer will unquestioningly process what you give it, even if the data is invalid or makes no sense. That’s analogous to what’s going on here. Some voters may skip the advisory vote questions because they find them confusing or rigged, but most will try to answer them because they want to vote a complete ballot, as every good citizen should. But since the advisory vote questions are no good, the results will also be no good. We are advising all state lawmakers – Democrats and Republicans alike – to draw no conclusions whatsoever from the results of these push polls, except that our tax dollars are being wasted yet again by a Tim Eyman initiative.”

The analysis – which looks at what voters see and what they don’t see when they come across the “advisory votes” – concludes that Eyman’s push polls are costly, deceptive, and unconstitutional. It notes that recent news stories about the advisory votes have failed to discuss the true extent of the cost of the push polls. The approximately $130,000 that was spent to put the push polls into the voter’s pamphlet (which Eyman has ironically called “chump change”) is just the beginning. In any election, there are costs associated with printing, mailing, and tallying ballots. Those costs will be higher in 2013 as a result of the inclusion of Eyman’s five push polls.

Recent news stories have also neglected to discuss the constitutionality of Eyman’s push polls; the analysis explains why NPI believes them to be unconstitutional.

Read the full analysis: Tim Eyman’s “advisory votes” are really costly, deceptive, and unconstitutional push polls

July 16th, 2013

Advisory vote costs are not “chump change”

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

Earlier today, The Herald of Everett reported that the Secretary of State has scheduled five meaningless “advisory votes” following the Legislature’s passage of five bills that resulted in revenue being raised or recovered for the state treasury.

The advisory votes are required a provision of Tim Eyman’s Initiative 960, which narrowly passed in 2007 and was partially struck down earlier this year by the Washington State Supreme Court.

The Herald’s Jerry Cornfield sought comment for Eyman about the five advisory votes, and reported that Eyman was unconcerned about the cost of what amounts to very expensive, pointless opinion research paid for with taxpayer dollars.

In fact, Eyman even referred to the cost of incorporating the advisory votes into the voter’s pamphlet (estimated at $240,000) as “chump change”.

“Tim Eyman’s comments today again show that his real objective is weakening and destroying government, not making it function more efficiently,” said NPI founder and executive director Andrew Villeneuve. “Our Constitution provides for three kinds of statewide ballot measures: initiatives, referenda, and constitutional amendments. The Constitution does not authorize advisory votes. Consequently, I-960’s advisory vote scheme is unconstitutional in addition to being wasteful. It was purposely engineered to clutter up our ballots and give Eyman more fodder for emails to reporters.”

“Elections budgets at the state and local level are stretched tight enough as it is – Eyman’s unconstitutional advisory vote scheme just makes a bad situation worse.”

The thicker voter’s pamphlet is actually not the only additional expense related to the advisory votes.

Yesterday, in a separate article, The Herald’s Jerry Cornfield reported that the price tag for the special election to fill Jay Inslee’s House seat ended up being more than three quarters of a million dollars ($791,339.40). Though it was an even-numbered year (when counties are responsible for elections costs) the state agreed to help the counties out with the special election.

King County will be sent the lion’s share of the money, $529,057.02, while Snohomish County gets $106,576.13 and Kitsap County stands to receive $55,706.21.

The data just released by the state for the special election in Washington’s 1st Congressional District makes it clear that the cost of adding races or ballot measures to our ballots is not, in fact, “chump change”.

Because 2013 is an odd-numbered year, the cost of holding the five advisory votes will likely come out of the state treasury. The final bill may not be paid by the state until late 2013 or early 2014, but it won’t be an insignificant amount of money.

“What many people don’t understand is that elections are actually a public service,” Villeneuve said. “It costs serious money to hold elections. Every time there’s a public vote on something, we pay for it. Democracy is a great thing, but it isn’t free.”

“That’s why, when a vote is held, it should mean something. If Tim Eyman wants to do public opinion research, he can pay for that himself with his own PAC’s funds. The rest of us should not be forced to pay for it.”

In the coming weeks, NPI’s Permanent Defense will be releasing a report, Elections are a public service, too: Here’s what they cost which will delve more deeply into the subject of election expenses. Look for this report as election season gets underway later in the summer.

May 9th, 2013

Tim Eyman again borrows against his house as a fundraising gimmick for his latest initiative

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & AdvisoriesThreat Analysis

Tim Eyman acknowledged today that he is moving forward with his latest unconstitutional initiative by loaning his campaign committee a quarter of a million dollars, presumably so that he can begin a signature drive for the measure.

Eyman is once again borrowing against his house, as he has in years past – or at least that’s what he’s told reporters like the Everett Herald’s Jerry Cornfield. The quarter of a million dollar check was reported by Eyman’s treasurer yesterday as a cash donation (see the C3) but Eyman says it’s really a loan, and the PDC reports that treasurer Barbara J. Smith filed will need to be corrected to reflect this.

A reasonable person might think that after being involved in campaigns for some fifteen years (going back to the late nineties) Tim Eyman would have figured out how to run a squeaky clean operation, be in compliance with our public disclosure laws, and report contributions, expenditures, and loans correctly the first time.

Sadly, it’s apparent that Eyman doesn’t care about following the law, just as he doesn’t care about the constitutionality of his initiatives. Eyman doesn’t care how inaccurate or misleading his reports are.

There’s another irregularity on that C3 that caught our attention.

Contributors who donate large amounts of money to a campaign are, under the law, supposed to state their occupation. The C3 filed by Barbara J. Smith yesterday lists Eyman’s occupation as “Retired”.

Seriously? That’s what they put? Retired from what? Selling watches?

Tim Eyman is not retired. He is employed on a full time basis as as a public services demolition expert, in the tradition of Grover Norquist. (“Professional activist” would be more charitable, but we’re not sure how Eyman can be called a professional given how sloppily run his campaign committees are).

Eyman does not do initiatives as a hobby. He does initiatives full time, with the aim of profiting from his campaigns. As he told the AP’s David Ammons in 2002 after he admitted taking supporter donations for his own personal use: “I want to continue to advocate issues and I want to make a lot of money doing it.”

If he is able to successfully run a paid signature drive on this latest measure, he will have two initiatives on the ballot this year for the first time since 2000. And one of those initiatives, I-517, is explicitly intended to help him run more and cheaper initiatives in the future.

Eyman’s initiative factory is a lucrative profit machine. Last year, he and his buddies reported that they spent $1.2 million on the I-1185 signature drive. But we know from talking to petitioners on that campaign that they were only paid a dollar a signature. And less than 350,000 signatures were submitted. So if the petitioners got less than a third of the money that was spent on the signature drive, where’d the rest go? It seems reasonable to assume it ended up in the pockets of Eyman and his associates.

It appears to us that I-1185 funds were also used for the I-517 signature drive. This and other irregularities regarding the I-517 campaign’s PDC reporting were documented in a complaint filed by Tacoma activist Sherry Bockwinkel in August of last year, which alleged that Eyman and his associates violated our public disclosure laws.

The PDC announced several weeks ago that it had formally opened an inquiry and would investigate the complaint.

Tim Eyman’s eleven all-time top wealthy benefactors over the years are as follows:

  1. Michael Dunmire
  2. Kemper Freeman, Jr.
  3. Beer Institute
  4. Great Canadian Gaming
  5. Michaels Development
  6. British Petroleum
  7. Tesoro
  8. ConocoPhillips
  9. Equilon/Shell
  10. Wes Lematta
  11. American Beverage Association

We’ve been anticipating that Eyman would move forward with this latest initiative. Accordingly, we will be organizing to fight it.

Washington State simply cannot afford any more destructive Eyman initiatives intended to eviscerate our public services and sabotage our Constitution.

May 2nd, 2013

Tim Eyman again floods reporters’ inboxes with worthless ten-year cost projections

Legislation & TestimonyRethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

Just before 10 AM this morning, Tim Eyman sent out an email claiming that the House Democrats’ revenue package raises taxes by $5.3 billion. Eyman enclosed a table of ten year cost estimates prepared by the Office of Financial Management (OFM).

What Eyman neglected to mention is that these ten year cost projections are worthless, and OFM only prepares them because they’re required to under Eyman’s Initiative 960. Eyman, a master of media manipulation, put a provision requiring the projections into his initiative so that he can regularly send reporters tables like this, and inflate the amount of proposed revenue increases.

Anything sounds bigger when it’s stretched out over ten years. Tim Eyman may well make over a million dollars from his initiative factory…. over the next ten years. His campaign committee “Voters Want More Choices” may well be the recipient of more than $20 million in checks from powerful interests like BP, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and ConocoPhillips… over the next ten years.

Eyman knows as well as we do that the Legislature prepares and adopts biennial budgets, not decennial budgets. But he doesn’t care.

“$5.3 billion” sounds much scarier than $885 million.

Eyman also doesn’t care that his “advisory vote” scheme is unconstitutional and a colossal waste of money. He likes the prospect of twelve separate questions on the November ballot asking the people of Washington to give their opinion on any increases in revenue the Legislature approves – because he already knows what the results to those twelve questions would be.

But again, what Eyman doesn’t like to admit is that the answers you get depend on the questions you ask. If the Legislature put a bunch of “advisory vote” questions on the ballot asking Washingtonians if they like the idea of putting more money into universities, K-12 education, state parks, Apple Health, Disability Lifeline, and other vital public services, we’d undoubtedly see a whole lot of “yes” votes in response. Remember, we’ve seen initiatives that could be called unfunded mandates pass handily in the past. (I-728 and I-732 are good examples).

The Constitution provides for an initiative and referendum process; it does not provide for “advisory votes”. Eyman’s advisory vote scheme is unconstitutional, and it’s unfortunate that the Supreme Court did not strike it down in its LEV decision. It means that further legal action will likely be needed in order to remove the thirsty leech Eyman’s initiatives have slapped on the state and counties’ elections budgets.

February 21st, 2013

Tim Eyman continues his ugly, stinky, and disgusting behavior with repugnant attack on Jay Inslee

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

Yesterday, after the House Democratic caucus unveiled its proposal for a new package of transportation improvements funded primarily by an increase in Washington’s fuel tax, we had a feeling that a hyberbolic rant was on the way from Tim Eyman, who the media has turned into Washington’s most visible and powerful unelected politician.

And sure enough, this morning, such an email arrived, devoid of substance and laden with inappropriate metaphors and a vile personal attack directed at our new governor, Jay Inslee. Eyman wasted no time in striking a low blow.

Candidate Inslee repeatedly promised to veto any tax increase. He said no way to higher transportation taxes in 2013. Inslee said he’d grow jobs to generate more tax revenue. What a lying whore he turned out to be. In recent weeks, he’s made it clear he’ll sign any tax increase the Legislature unilaterally imposes.  Is there any doubt that Inslee would have lost by a landslide if he’d been honest about his tax-hiking plans during the campaign?

Emphasis is ours. Our assessment of this message is that Eyman is being deliberately provocative in order to get his name and viewpoint into follow-up blog posts and stories on the transportation package.

He may already be planning to “apologize” in a few days’ time for his inflammatory comments, so he can garner even more media attention.

We urge reporters, editors, and producers not to take the bait. This isn’t news. Let the only response to this despicable commentary be from his opposition.

Eyman deserves to be called out for his inappropriate and disparaging remarks, but he does not deserve more headlines and on-air mentions by the traditional press. He has already shown he has nothing to contribute to a sane discussion about the value of public services in our state.

So let us do the calling-out, and don’t give Eyman what he wants. Don’t reward his ugly, stinky, and disgusting behavior.

January 28th, 2013

Pot, meet kettle: Tim Eyman attacks Governor Jay Inslee for “employing political spin” on revenue

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

Another Monday has arrived, and so has another mid-morning Eyman missive that sounds like it was put together on an assembly line in Tim’s home office. Today’s target is Governor Jay Inslee, who took office less than two weeks ago and is now trying to put together a budget proposal – presumably a proposal that will square with what he said during last autumn’s campaign.

Inslee and his team are weeks away from presenting their budget, but that hasn’t stopped Tim Eyman from charging that Inslee intends to raise taxes.

In Eyman’s universe, any action that forestalls a decrease in revenue is really a tax increase, just as the repeal of any tax loophole or exemption is a tax increase. It is worth remembering that Eyman’s own unconstitutional, undemocratic initiatives use his definition for what a tax increase is.

And since I-960/I-1053/I-1185 are regrettably on our books, the Office of Financial Management is using Eyman’s definition – because Eyman’s own initiative requires them to! From Section 2 of I-960:

(1) For any bill introduced in either the house of representatives or the senate that raises taxes as defined by RCW 43.135.035 or increases fees, the office of financial management must expeditiously determine its cost to the taxpayers in its first ten years of imposition, must promptly and without delay report the results of its analysis by public press release via email to each member of the house of representatives, each member of the senate, the news media, and the public, and must post and maintain these releases on its web site. Any ten-year cost projection must include a year-by-year breakdown. For any bill containing more than one revenue source, a ten-year cost projection for each revenue source will be included along with the bill’s total ten-year cost projection. The press release shall include the names of the legislators, and their contact information, who are sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill so they can provide information to, and answer questions from, the public.

We can see from this provision of I-960 that the initiative also stupidly requires OFM to do ten-year cost projections. As our friends at the Washington Budget & Policy Center have pointed out on several occasions, these projections are worthless. By Eyman’s logic, a police lieutenant in NPI’s hometown of Redmond will make more than half a million dollars — over the next ten years.

During the 2010 legislative session, the Legislature raised revenue by around $600 million per year. And a substantial chunk of that is actually set to expire this year. So Eyman’s billion-dollar figures are bogus.

Eyman loves to talk about – and distort – the revenue side of the equation when it comes to the state budget. But he almost never talks about the value side. It often seems as though Eyman would like us all to believe the membership dues we pay as citizens of this great state of Washington just disappear into the ether.

In reality, our taxes provide for roads, bridges, ferries, buses, rail transit, libraries, parks, pools, schools, universities, police and fire protection, clean drinking water, and waste treatment, as well as mental health counseling, housing, and other human services for the most vulnerable among us.

And that’s just the abridged version of what is a long list.

We all benefit from these public services, Tim Eyman included. And we all lose when draconian cuts result in services being eviscerated or eliminated. Austerity measures are bad for public health, bad for environmental freedom, bad for safe neighborhoods, and bad for economic security. Austerity measures lead to lost jobs in the public sector and start a chain reaction that causes real GDP to fall by an amount larger than the total amount of money they “save”. (Those reading who have studied macroeconomics know this concept is known as the multiplier effect).

Eyman’s initiatives are purposely written to deprive our common wealth of the revenue that our public services need to stay in strong shape.

In his early days, Eyman hawked schemes that slashed revenue directly; but he has since taken to heart a famous saying of Grover Norquist’s: “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” That’s why his more recent initiatives take a death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach to wrecking state and local government.

Eyman tries to make it sound as though state government is some monstrous beast consuming more and more of our money with every passing year. But this is a fiction. State and local taxes per $1,000 of personal income have actually been on the decline since before the the Great Recession hit, as the Office of Financial Management shows on this page, complete with a chart that also shows the fifty state average.

In 1995, state and local taxes per $1,000 of personal income hit a high of $119.93. In 2010, the most recent year for which data was available, the figure stood at $94.48. That’s a decrease, not an increase, and a fairly significant decrease over fifteen years.

What about expenditures? Well, again, contrary to Tim Eyman’s hyperbolic rhetoric, expenditures have not been on a meteoric rise. State and local government expenditures per $1,000 of personal income have risen and declined slightly at times over the past two decades, but expenditures today are lower than they were in the early nineties. Here’s the data from OFM, again with a nifty chart.

Twenty years ago, in 1993, state expenditures stood at $224.37 per $1,000 of personal income. That was the high point during the last two decades. In 2010, the most recent year for which data was available, the figure was $200.42.

Again, that’s a decrease, not an increase.

Furthermore, since 2000, Washington’s average has tracked the fifty-state average.

How revenues and expenditures are measured matters. By presenting information in absolute terms, Tim Eyman can make it seem as though government just keeps taking more and more of our money. But the truth is that we the people are the government, and we have reduced our obligations to each other over the last twenty years.

Washington is not the same state it was in 2003, 1993, or 1983. As our economy has grown, so has the demand for public services. The state may be taking in more revenue than it did not long ago in absolute terms, but in relative terms, it’s not. And data cannot be fairly or meaningfully compared year-to-year in absolute terms; as the oft-used expression goes, it’s like comparing apples to oranges.

Ten years ago was a different time; twenty years ago was a different time. Even last year was a different time. We have to compensate for population growth, new development, inflation, and other factors when we consider what it costs to provide services now versus what it cost back then. That’s why it makes sense to look at revenue and expenditures per $1,000 of personal income.

It is beyond ironic that Tim Eyman is accusing newly inaugurated Governor Jay Inslee of “employing political spin”. Nobody is better at generating spin and manipulating the media in Washington than Tim Eyman, who shows no signs of wanting to call it quits after more than a decade of promoting initiatives… and profiting from them.

January 23rd, 2013

In 1914, it cost $117.23 to file an initiative in 2013 dollars… so why does it only cost $5 today?

Ballot WatchdoggingRethinking and Reframing

As of yesterday, we are three weeks into 2013, and already, Tim Eyman has filed sixteen initiatives to the people, including two today. That’s an average of more than five per week, and it’s one more than the total number of initiatives to the people filed so far in 2013 (fifteen) by everybody else.

Reporters and longtime observers of state government know that over the years, Eyman has become an increasingly prolific sponsor of initiatives. Most of the measures he files are simply duplicate copies (or near-duplicate copies) of the same set of bad ideas he’s been hawking for more than a decade. We have never seen an Eyman initiative aimed at ending homelessness or cleaning up Puget Sound. We have, however, seen plenty of Eyman initiatives written to deliberately wreck government and sabotage our common wealth so that vital public services are starved of revenue.

Every time Eyman files an initiative, it costs him just five dollars to get a ballot title from the Attorney General’s office and to get feedback from the Code Reviser. But it costs the rest of us much more. The Secretary of State’s office freely admits that five dollars doesn’t come close to covering the cost of processing initiative and referendum filings. Yet the filing fee has never been raised. Staff at the Secretary of State’s office confirmed to NPI today that the filing fee has stayed at $5 ever since the initiative and referendum process was established over a hundred years ago.

In 1912, when the initiative and referendum powers were added to the State Constitution, Washington was a very different place. Far fewer people lived here; many of the cities and towns that are now nestled in our mountain foothills, above our rocky coastlines, or on the rolling plains of the Columbia Plateau did not exist. For example, the City of Redmond, NPI’s hometown, was incorporated December 31st, 1912… several weeks after that year’s election took place.

In those days, five dollars went a lot further than it does now. In fact, in 1914, the first year that initiatives appeared on Washington’s ballot, it cost about $117.23 to file an initiative… in 2013 dollars.

So why does it only cost $5 today? The filing fee hasn’t been updated to keep up with inflation, let alone cover the true costs of filing an initiative or a referendum.

Five dollars, to people in 1914, was what we would consider about $117.23 today, according to WolframAlpha’s U.S. inflation calculator. Here’s the math:

1914 filing fee x (2013 CPI/1914 CPI) = 1914 price in today’s dollars

See the input and the results on WolframAlpha.

The CPI, for those reading who don’t know, stands for Consumer Price Index. It is a key economic indicator calculated by the Department of Labor. It is widely used for many purposes. For example, Washington State’s Department of Labor & Industries looks at the CPI when determining how to adjust Washington’s minimum wage each year. (The minimum wage just went up a few weeks ago, on January 1st).

Eyman and others have argued the filing fee should not be raised because a higher fee would impede citizens who wish to drum up public awareness for their ideas.

But this argument does not hold water. Plenty of people filed initiatives during the years when five dollars was akin to $117, or $100, or $75, or $50 today. And, in fact, anyone wishing to file an initiative today has to compete with Tim Eyman, whose high number of duplicate filings make the list maintained by the Secretary of State’s website more difficult to browse. Eyman’s ballot title shopping is creating unnecessary work for the people who remain in the Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney General’s office, and the Code Reviser’s office. Eyman is wasting state resources by filing the same initiative texts over and over and over… and he doesn’t care.

It is time that we raised the initiative filing fee so it at least is brought current with inflation. We have calculated that it cost about $117.23 to file an initiative in 1914. Why shouldn’t it cost about the same now?

To accommodate Washingtonians who are on a limited income and wish to be able to put forth an idea for consideration as an initiative, lawmakers could permit the Secretary of State to waive the filing fee for individuals who find, say, five hundred other like-minded citizens of the State of Washington to cosponsor their initiative.

This would encourage the formation of efforts that are truly grassroots. No initiative campaign that cannot afford (or chooses not to make use of) paid signature gatherers can get a measure on the ballot without doing true grassroots organizing. A person wishing to file an initiative should either be able to help the State of Washington cover the true costs of processing their filing, or demonstrate that there is enough interest in their idea to justify the waiving of the filing fee. Such an approach would mirror the way that filing fees for public office work today.

October 19th, 2012

Tired of legislative gridlock? Then vote NO on I-1185

EndorsementsRethinking and Reframing

The Olympian, our state capital’s longtime daily newspaper, published a truly superlative editorial today calling for the rejection of Tim Eyman and BP’s Initiative 1185 which we commend to the attention of voters, activists, and reporters. It’s one of the best editorials we’ve seen in a long time, and we can’t say enough good things about it. Here are its opening lines:

Voters, are you tired of a Legislature that can’t make progress on fully funding basic education?

Do you want less-congested highways, and lower tolls on bridges? Do you want state parks that stay open, and in good repair? Do you want college tuitions that your family can afford?

Do you want quick response times from law enforcement, fire fighters and ambulances when you need them?

If you do, then you must reject Initiative 1185 on Nov. 6.

By continuing to support these Tim Eyman initiatives you are subverting a fundamental principle of representative democracy.

That principle? Majority rule with minority rights. We will cease to be a democracy if power becomes concentrated in the hands of the few instead of the many. Initiative 1185, like its predecessors, takes power away from the many and gives it to the few. It is intended to prevent our Legislature from functioning democratically as our founders intended it to. I-1185 allows seventeen out of forty nine senators, or thirty-three out of ninety-eight representatives, to kill any bill that raises (or even recovers) revenue for the state treasury.

Corporate lobbyists are for I-1185 because it’s easier to manipulate a system that’s rigged. That’s why companies like BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell, and Tesoro gave Tim Eyman and his buddies more than a million dollars to buy signatures for I-1185. I-1185 helps them protect their profits… at our expense.

Join us in voting NO on I-1185. Let’s uphold our Constitution and reject this attack on our democracy.

September 27th, 2012

Two-thirds is *not* a majority: New pictogram explains what I-1185, lawsuit against I-1053 are really about

From the Campaign TrailIn the CourtsRethinking and Reframing

Today, NPI’s Permanent Defense is releasing a new pictogram that explains what Initiative 1185 and the lawsuit against I-1053 are really about.

Inspired by NPI’s late board member Lynn Allen, the artist and storyteller who created a similar visual for NPI’s 2010 video explaining the cost and consequences of I-1053, the pictogram shows how the two-thirds scheme embraced by Tim Eyman and big oil companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell is preventing our Legislature from functioning as our founders intended it to.

What I-1185 and the lawsuit against I-1053 are really about
Click on thumbnail to see larger image

On the left side of the pictogram is an illustration of what happens when Article II, Section 22 of our state Constitution is in force. Fifty votes (out of ninety-eight total) are sufficient to pass a revenue bill in the House, and twenty-five votes (out of forty-nine total) are sufficient to pass a revenue bill in the Senate.

On the right side of the pictogram is an illustration of what the two-thirds scheme does when it it allowed to illegitimately take precedence over Article II, Section 22. Power is unconstitutionally and undemocratically transferred to a minority – specifically, thirty-three representatives in the House and seventeen senators in the Senate – who gain veto power over the majority.

The words “control outcome” are used in the pictogram to explain who really has power in each situation. When the Legislature operates in accordance with the rules from our Constitution, the majority prevails, because a majority vote is sufficient to pass a bill – even a bill that raises revenue. But when Tim Eyman and Big Oil’s rules are substituted for the Constitution’s rules, control of the outcome passes into the hands of just a few lawmakers, who can override their colleagues.

“This pictogram gives meaning to the adage,  ‘A picture is worth a thousand words'”, said NPI founder Andrew Villeneuve. “It is hard to quickly explain to voters the destructive impact that I-960 and I-1053 have had on our state. But this pictogram tells the story, through simple stick figures and easy-to-read fractions.”

“What the pictogram tells us is that above all, this two-thirds scam has sabotaged our plan of government and prevented our Legislature from operating democratically as it always should. It has changed the decision-making process.”

“That has been the most important consequence. The damage isn’t necessarily visible, but it’s there all of the same… beneath the surface.”

“Tim Eyman has a simple slogan he has been using for years, for I-960, for I-1053, and now I-1185: ‘We can’t trust Olympia, so let’s make it tougher for politicians to raise taxes.’ As far as sound bites go, it’s short, but it’s definitely not sweet. The word sour would be a more fitting descriptor. It’s a manipulative sales pitch that reeks of cynicism and improvidence. It should be obvious by now that Eyman thrives on distrust in government; he has an interest in sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt in people’s minds. It’s good for business.”

“Eyman wants people to think that state government is the problem, so they’ll overlook the fact that his initiative factory is funded by powerful corporations like BP, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell.”

“These corporations want to trample all over our state Constitution so their lobbyists can wield even more power in our state’s capital than they already do.”

“From looking at the pictogram, we can see that requiring a two-thirds vote to raise revenue is not democratic. The phrase ‘two-thirds majority’ is a misnomer because two-thirds is not a majority. It’s a supermajority. And here’s the thing: A supermajority is actually the inverse of a submajority, which even Rob McKenna’s office agrees is not a majority. Requiring a two-thirds vote to raise revenue, in practice, means that just over one-third of the lawmakers of each house control the outcome. They can say no to everybody else.”

It is worth noting that our Constitution itself cannot be altered by majority vote. But that is because it is our highest law. It is the sacred document that protects minority rights. As recent research by Perkins Coie’s David Perez shows, our founders debated where and when to require supermajorities; they knew that in any instance where a higher threshold was put in place, the minority would control the outcome.

The rules they gave us say a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote, but bills require just a majority vote. That way, we have majority rule with minority rights. And by majority vote, our founders meant greater than fifty percent.

No more, no less.

What I-1185 and the lawsuit against I-1053 are really about is this: Will we uphold Washington’s Constitution or not? If we care about the rule of law and the plan of government our founders gave us, we ought to reject I-1185 at the ballot, and our Supreme Court ought to uphold Judge Bruce Heller’s ruling striking down I-1053.

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