Category Archives: Rethinking and Reframing

January 24th, 2012

Tim Eyman refiles HB 1415 as initiative to the people, labels it “Fund Education First” (with what money, Tim?)

Rethinking and Reframing

Yesterday, presumably while he was at the state’s Capitol Campus to testify on a bill he didn’t like, Tim Eyman filed three more initiatives, bringing the total number he’s filed so far this year to eight. The first two are titled “Son of 1053” and “Son of 1125” (and they are comprised of provisions recycled from Eyman’s last two initiatives.)

But the third initiative is altogether different. Eyman filed it under the title “Fund Education First” (no, we’re not joking). However, Eyman didn’t write it. It appears to be a carbon copy of House Bill 1415, filed a year ago by House Republicans. HB 1415 is a short, four-provision bill that would require the Legislature to appropriate funding for Washington’s K-12 schools before appropriating revenue to fund other services.

The full text can be found at the Legislature’s website.

It appears that Eyman has simply lifted the text of the bill in its entirety and is using it as a first draft of an initiative to the people (an initiative he probably has no intention of running). The text will now be reworked by the Code Reviser’s office – at taxpayer expense! – into a format appropriate for an initiative, perhaps with editorial commentary written by Eyman inserted as a preface.

The last provision of HB 1415, by the way, ties the legislation to the fate of a proposed constitutional amendment. This provision will probably be deleted by the Code Reviser’s office since it makes no sense to keep it in.

This act takes effect January 1, 2012, if the proposed amendment to Article IX of the state Constitution HJR . . . . (H-0681.1/11) is validly submitted to and is approved and ratified by the voters at the next general election. If the proposed amendment is not approved and ratified, this act is void in its entirety.

We think it’s beyond ironic that Tim Eyman has filed an initiative to “fund education first”. His own initiatives have made funding vital public services like our public schools nearly impossible. Many schools and school districts have only managed to stave off financial disaster because they’ve been able to raise money through voter-approved levies and bonds or through Parent Teacher Association (PTA) fundraising.

Years of Eyman initiatives have taken a serious toll on our state’s commonwealth. Many of Eyman’s most destructive schemes have been explicitly designed to prevent the Legislature from acting to solve the problem. And Washington’s youth are paying the price. They aren’t getting the education they deserve – the education that the Constitution of Washington State requires us as a society to provide.

It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.

It is up to us to make our Constitution a living document. If we don’t uphold our Constitution, its provisions become nothing more than words on a page. Our Founding Fathers gave us an enduring plan of government which calls for majority rule with minority rights. Unfortunately, majority rule has now been sabotaged by multiple Tim Eyman initiatives, which have also indirectly harmed all of the public services our commonwealth pays for.

The disingenuous “Fund education first” mantra that Eyman and others are propagating must be rejected. We cannot fund our schools by taking away funding from our universities, corrections system, social safety net, state parks, or other services. That’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are no shortcuts we can take, or corners we can cut, that will get us out of this mess. There is no free lunch. A moral budget ultimately comes down to math, for public services cost money. And we are not raising enough money to pay for the services we want and need.

We are clearly not asking enough of ourselves. We need to stop dithering, backfilling, and sliding. That means raising taxes and beginning to work on addressing our broken tax structure so that we can sustain our commonwealth long-term.

Yes, times are tough. But recessions are precisely when we depend on our public services the most. Austerity measures will not help our economy recover. They create a vicious cycle that leads to more gloom and unemployment. We can only break that cycle by strengthening our commonwealth.

November 23rd, 2011

Debunking Tim Eyman’s budget fabrications

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

Eager to put the failure of I-1125 behind him, Tim Eyman has, in recent days, resorted to attacking one of his favorite targets (Governor Chris Gregoire) in his multi-weekly fundraising appeals to his band of followers.

Eyman’s latest email, dated today, is a doozy; to describe it as chock-full of fabrications would be a major understatement. It is impressively crammed with blatantly false statements and mischaracterizations.

On occasion, we take the time to deconstruct Tim Eyman’s nonsense blow-by-blow, to illustrate what we mean when we say that he is a snake oil salesman.

We’ve done that again today.

For your reading enjoyment, here is the most dishonest, deceptive paragraph from Eyman’s email, followed by our line-by-line refutation of it.

Gregoire’s first term involved explosive spending growth that was completely unsustainable: 34% spending increases. Her mountain of spending made the valley of deficits that much deeper. So by their crazy math, they claim they’ve cut spending $10 billion. And they believe the only ‘fair’ way to balance the budget is with 1/2 tax increases, 1/2 spending cuts. So that means $5 billion in tax hikes, not $500 million. If not for I-1053, they could take as much as they want and with an “emergency clause” slapped on, there’d be nothing the voters could do about it.

Let’s take this paragraph apart.

Claim #1: “Gregoire’s first term involved explosive spending growth that was completely unsustainable:  34% spending increases. Her mountain of spending made the valley of deficits that much deeper.”

False. Governor Chris Gregoire’s first term began on January 12th, 2005 and ended January 14th, 2009. During those four years, state and local expenditures per $1,000 of personal income actually fell. (This is the measurement economists use to compare our government’s finances from year to year).

According to the Office of Financial Management, state and local expenditures per $1,000 of personal income were $205.75 in 2004 – the year before Gregoire took office. In 2005, they declined slightly to $199.41, and they dropped again in 2006 to $196.41. Expenditures stayed constant in 2007 and then went up a smidgen in 2008. Here’s a table, which can also be seen on OFM’s website.

2008 $197.74
2007 $196.41
2006 $196.41
2005 $199.48

That page also has a chart showing that expenditures have been somewhat constant over the last two decades. There have been highs and lows, but no wild swings.

OFM’s data, by the way, is derived from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Eyman’s “explosive spending growth” claim is pure fiction, and he knows it.
Claim #2: So by their crazy math, they claim they’ve cut spending $10 billion.
In reality, it’s Eyman’s math that’s crazy – not the governor’s and not OFM’s. Eyman routinely (and dishonestly) fabricates numbers. Being accurate is not important to him. Unlike Eyman, Governor Gregoire and state economists have to operate in the real world. They can’t lie with impunity like he can.
The correct figure is actually $10.5 billion in cuts over the last three years, not $10 billion. It should be understood that $500 million is not an insignificant amount of money. In fact, it’s a huge amount of money.

Claim #3: “[T]hey believe the only ‘fair’ way to balance the budget is with 1/2 tax increases, 1/2 spending cuts.”

False. We assume that “they” means Governor Gregoire and Democratic lawmakers (it’s not clear who else Eyman would be referring to). To our knowledge, neither Democratic legislative leaders nor any subset of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses have formally released a plan for addressing the latest budget shortfall, let alone a plan with a formula of “1/2 tax increases, 1/2 spending cuts.”

Governor Chris Gregoire, on the other hand, has released a plan for addressing the budget shortfall. If adopted as proposed, it would make $2 billion in cuts, raise $835 million in revenue, and leave $600 million in reserves. The $2 billion in proposed cuts is more than twice the amount of proposed new revenue.

The governor has repeatedly made it clear she does not want to make any more cuts to vital services, period. “I don’t want anyone to think that I like these options,” Gregoire said on October 27th, when she rolled out the first draft of her plan for dealing with the budget shortfall (which did not include any revenue increases).

Contrary to what Eyman implied in his email today, Gregoire has not used the word “fair” to describe her more recent, amended proposal, which calls for some revenue to cancel out devastating cuts. That’s probably because she recognizes that there is nothing that’s fair about the situation we’re in as a state, and nothing fair about a response that is mostly oriented around counterproductive austerity measures (which is a kinder way of saying evisceration of vital public services that people rely on).

What the governor did say is this: “After three years of cutting, now is the time to invest in a better future for all Washingtonians… I believe Washingtonians will stand with me. I believe they are tired of tearing down the services our parents and grandparents built — services that reflect the special values of Washington State.”

Claim #4: So that means $5 billion in tax hikes, not $500 million.

False. The governor has proposed increasing the state sales tax from 6.5% to 7%. The increase would be temporary, expiring on July 1st, 2015. The increase would go into effect on July 1st, 2012, and is projected to bring in $494 million through June 30th, 2013. If it brought in a similar amount in the two subsequent years it remained in effect, then the total raised would amount to approximately $1.5 billion.

The governor is also asking the Legislature to approve $341 million in additional revenue alternatives, some of which are temporary. If all of them were approved, that would bring the total raised through June 30th, 2013, to $835 million.

The Office of Financial Management has not estimated how much revenue the governor’s plan would bring in through July 1st, 2015. But even if we assumed that the governor’s plan would increase state revenue by $835 million per year beginning July 1st, 2012, and ending July 1st, 2015, that’s still only $2.5 billion… not $5 billion.

Claim #5: If not for I-1053, they could take as much as they want and with an “emergency clause” slapped on, there’d be nothing the voters could do about it.

False. Voters have the power to fire the entire House of Representatives and half the Senate every two years. If we the people of Washington don’t like the decisions our lawmakers make, we can vote our lawmakers out of office. That’s what representative democracy is all about. (Every Washington voter, Tim Eyman included, is represented by two state representatives and one state senator).

Furthermore, as the American Beverage Association proved last year with Initiative 1107, it is possible to force a public vote on a revenue increase even if the emergency clause is invoked. That’s because, although a bill with the emergency clause attached cannot be subject to referendum, it can still be repealed by initiative.

During the 2010 legislative session, lawmakers voted to slightly raise taxes on soda. The ABA (which is mostly funded and controlled by The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, and Dr Pepper Snapple Group) responded by dumping $16 million into I-1107, a statewide initiative which was approved at the November 2010 general election. I-1107 rescinded the tax increase on soda, the tax increase on candy, and put back into place an unfair tax exemption the Legislature had repealed.

October 26th, 2011

Danny Westneat assails Tim Eyman’s secret war on light rail

From the Campaign TrailRethinking and Reframing

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat has a blistering must-read column in today’s edition of the Seattle Times, taking Tim Eyman and Kemper Freeman Jr. to task for quietly trying to stop Sound Transit’s East Link project through a sneaky provision buried in I-1125, which is intended to kill East Link, but doesn’t actually mention the project or even include the words “light rail”.

When Tim Eyman went before the Bellevue City Council recently, he handed out a sheet describing what his latest idea, Initiative 1125, would do.

It’s what was missing from the sheet that got the most attention.

“I’ve never seen an initiative quite like this, where its intentions are masked from the people who will vote on it,” says Grant Degginger, a Bellevue City Council member and former mayor.

“If you’re trying to kill light rail, just come out and say so.”

It’s not just that the words “light rail” weren’t in Eyman’s handout that day. They also are not in the Voter’s Guide statement for the I-1125 campaign. Nor in any of Eyman’s campaign news releases. Nor in recent op-eds written by Eyman and the initiative’s financier, Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman.

The words “light rail” aren’t in I-1125 or in Eyman’s campaign materials because Eyman and Freeman apparently don’t want to be seen as trying to overturn the will of the voters. (The phrase will of the voters is one of Eyman’s favorites). Both Eyman and Freeman opposed Sound Transit 2 when it was on the ballot three years ago, but they lost. In fact, they didn’t just lose, they lost big.

As Westneat notes:

[P]utting light rail across the Interstate 90 bridge is already voter-approved, by a 57 percent vote in the 2008 election. Brochures from that campaign show a rendering of the bridge with light rail running on it, along with before-and-after drawings of how the traffic lanes would be altered. So it’s hard to argue people didn’t know what they were voting for. Then, anyway.

Of course, in Tim Eyman’s mind, a vote of the people only counts when it goes his way. Eyman views his own losses as temporary setbacks, but he demands that his opponents recognize his victories as permanent. It’s quite the double standard.

Please join us in voting NO on I-1125 this autumn. Keep Sound Transit’s East Link project on track, keep our roads safe, and keep Washington rolling.

September 16th, 2011

RE: Given the state’s newest revenue forecast…

Legislation & TestimonyRethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

Washington’s Legislature passed a budget last spring that relied on revenue forecasts which were too optimistic. The Economic and Revenue Forecast Council yesterday projected that the state will collect $1.4 billion less in taxes between now and 2013 than it had previously estimated.

Consequently, Governor Gregoire and lawmakers must now figure out how to close yet another deficit, after having already eliminated or slashed vital public services earlier this year.

Unless the governor and lawmaker decide to raise revenue to close the shortfall, there is no way that this deficit can be closed without hurting the lives of Washington families, especially seniors, youth, and veterans. We are the past the point, figuratively speaking, where we are scraping bone as a state, in terms of our public services. Without new revenue, we’ll have to chop off limbs.

The governor and state lawmakers ought to call upon those who fiercely oppose raising revenue – including Tim Eyman and his corporate allies – and insist that they help write a modified state budget. The time has come for the people responsible for bringing us Initiative 1053 to take responsibility for the consequences stemming from the outcome of the election they bought.

Tim Eyman has turned himself into a full-time citizen – sorry, make that corporate – lawmaker. If lawmaking is what he wants to do, then he needs to be accountable like any other lawmaker. We have a fiscal emergency.

This is an all hands on deck situation.

We at NPI propose that the state begin closing this $1.4 billion shortfall by sunsetting outdated and unnecessary tax loopholes.

For instance, there is a loophole on our books now which allows Wall Street banks to avoid paying business and occupation taxes on the interest or investment earnings made from the interest from residential first mortgages. There are dozens upon dozens of loopholes like this that could be closed, which could save what is left of our public services from being further eviscerated.

If Tim Eyman and his sympathizers do not want to raise revenue as we propose, then they must spell out what they want to cut. That is the only other choice. Eyman said today, “With I-1053, tax increases become an absolute last resort… Olympia must exhaust all other options first. That’s what the people want.”

Actually, what people want is for the economy to get better. But it won’t as long we keep wrecking government and destroying public services, which is the only course of action that I-1053 was designed to allow.

We encourage reporters and lawmakers to take every opportunity to ask Tim Eyman: What “other options” do you have in mind?

Should we cut off our universities and colleges and say, “You’re on your own! No more state money!” Should we begin releasing prison inmates early? Should we end Apple Health or Disability Lifeline entirely?

As a state, we can either move forward or slide backward. We can move forward by raising revenue to save vital public services that we all depend on. Or, we can slide backward by eliminating services, laying off more public workers, and abandoning people who desperately need help.

There isn’t a third choice.

Our elected lawmakers have spent the last decade backfilling like crazy, cleaning up after unelected lawmakers like Tim Eyman. Well, the days when we could backfill and mitigate the ramifications Eyman’s initiatives are over.

Now come the days of reckoning.

For too long, Governor Gregoire and lawmakers have tried to ignore Tim Eyman because they haven’t wanted to confront him.

But we need a confrontation. Washingtonians need to be given an opportunity to think about what kind of state they want to live in before the governor and Legislature play TimCity for real. If Eyman and his corporate backers want a budget with no new revenue in it, they need to help write that budget. The governor and state lawmakers should insist that they participate in identifying cuts.

And reporters should start replying to every email Tim Eyman sends with a simple one-liner: Hey Tim… what do you think we should cut?

August 15th, 2011

Voters in King County never demanded “$30 car tabs”

Election PostmortemRethinking and Reframing

Still mad over King County Executive Dow Constantine’s successful efforts to patch Metro’s funding shortfall, Tim Eyman is now asking his supporters to print out and hang up an eight and one half by eleven inch poster which accosts King County Councilmembers Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert as liars, Councilmember Julia Patterson as a sell-out, and Councilmember Bob Ferguson as… wait for it… Switzerland (because he didn’t say at the outset of the debate how he would vote).

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).

June 6th, 2011

Memo to the Seattle Times: Majority vote means fifty percent plus one – no more, no less!

Election PostmortemIn the CourtsRethinking and Reframing

The following is the text of the letter to the editor sent by NPI to the Seattle Times in response to the Times’ Sunday editorial urging the state Supreme Court not to strike down I-1053 if it receives an opportunity to do so.

In your Sunday, June 5th editorial (State’s two-thirds rule on taxes should be retained), you contend that Tim Eyman and BP’s Initiative 1053 (which violates Article II, Section 22) could pass constitutional muster:

The constitution does say a majority, but it uses negative language. It says, ‘No bill shall become a law’ without a majority. The state’s Republican attorney general, Rob McKenna, argues that this sets a minimum standard, and that the voters, through the initiative process, may temporarily raise it.

A similar argument was made by proponents of a 1053-like measure in Alaska several years ago, and rejected by Alaska’s Supreme Court in Alaskans for Efficient Government v. State of Alaska (2007). “Other courts interpreting constitutional language have wisely refrained from attributing any automatic significance to the distinction between negative and positive phrasing,” the Court ruled.

Referring to the proponents (Alaskans for Efficient Government), the Court added:

AFEG’s logic would just as readily compel the anomalous conclusion that section 14 was meant to set a ceiling but not a floor — that a majority vote would be the maximum needed to enact any bill, but the legislature would remain free to specify a sub-majority vote as sufficient to enact laws dealing with specified subjects, as it saw fit.

Majority vote means fifty percent plus one. No more, no less. There is no minimum standard. There is only the standard the founders intended – the only standard that makes sense in a democracy.

Our founders knew when it was appropriate to use supermajorities to protect minority rights from mob rule. Wherever a supermajority is required, the Constitution spells it out. But there is no reference to supermajorities in Article II, Section 22. That’s because the founders intended for a majority vote to decide the fate of all bills – not just some bills.

Initiative 1053 is a slippery slope. Unless it is struck down, we will not be protected against future copycat measures that undemocratically tie lawmakers’ hands and prevent our republic from functioning as it was designed to.

The Times gravely errs in attempting to justify its support of an initiative that dangerously undermines our plan of government.

POSTSCRIPT: The Seattle Times has published this letter online.

May 18th, 2011

Hypocrisy, thy name is Eyman: Voters Want More Choices responds to underhanded tactics with campaign of harassment

Rethinking and Reframing

Yesterday, one of Washington’s largest daily newspapers, the Everett Herald, semi-outed a commenter who has been regularly defending red-light cameras in the comment threads of news stories the Herald has published about city governments’ deliberations over whether or not to use them.

It turns out this commenter, “W Howard”, is actually Bill Kroske, a vice president for development at one of the nation’s largest red light camera manufacturers – American Traffic Solutions. The Herald was able to find this out because Kroske used his work email address when submitting comments, which either means he doesn’t understand how to cover his tracks on the Internet or wasn’t even trying.

The story would have been interesting enough without any reaction from Tim Eyman, but the reporters who wrote the post, like so many of their colleagues, apparently feel some sort of obligation to give Eyman extra and unnecessary exposure.

But maybe it was a good thing they did, because as a result of them asking Tim for his thoughts, we got this gem of a sound bite:

Eyman chuckled when told about the Kroske connection.

“It shows a level of sophistication and manipulation,” he said. “… If you’ve got a product that everybody loves it is going to be self evident. You don’t need to manipulate web sites, sounding boards and impersonate local folks to get the message out.”

Oh really? If that’s the case, then why does Tim spend so much of his time manipulating websites and sounding boards to get his message out?

Not to mention paying reporters a visit, or calling them, or emailing them. (That’s partly why the press corps can’t ignore him. Eyman makes sure that they can’t. He has a gift for media manipulation, and he uses it to the fullest extent he can).

Anybody who has looked at the comment thread of a news story about Tim Eyman knows exactly what we’re talking about. Eyman shows up, posts links to his websites, trashes opponents, and debates other commenters. But his activities are hardly limited to that. He regularly reposts his emails on the region’s best known right-wing blog, (un)Sound Politics. He crafts talking points into op-eds so he can get his message directly into websites operated by media outlets.

He’s even edited his own Wikipedia entry.

Pretty much all of Tim’s activities shows a level of sophistication and manipulation that impresses us. It also worries us, because his means and ends are incredibly destructive in more than one way.

For instance, Eyman’s response to the story was to email all of his supporters and urge them to pepper Bill Kroske with nastygrams, and then send nastygrams to a long list of city councilmembers from Mukilteo, Monroe, Bellingham, Seattle, and Redmond, the hometown of NPI and Permanent Defense.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with constituents writing to their councilmember, but Eyman is hardly trying to encourage civil discourse here. He’s waging a campaign of harassment against people he portrays as evil.

What does that make him and those of his followers who do as he asks?

And what’s the deal with Eyman calling out Bill Kroske and American Traffic Solutions for trying to make money? Doesn’t right wing dogma say that’s a good thing? “[T]he Everett Herald has exposed the lengths they’ll go to as a corporate policy to protect those profits,” Eyman declared in his email this afternoon.

That’s funny, because the same point could be made about BP, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, USBank, and the host of other powerful corporations that donated big bucks to put Tim’s Initiative 1053 on the ballot last year. Without their money, I-1053 couldn’t have made it, as Tim well knows. They ponied up for Eyman because I-1053 helps them protect their profits – at our expense – on a grand scale.

Tim obviously doesn’t care about big corporations running roughshod over the rest of us – he’s defended his corporate support on many occasions.

That just proves what we’ve tried to point out for years: Tim Eyman is not a champion, a guru, or a populist. He is a professional political operative, living off of the huge checks written to him by some of the wealthiest, most powerful people and businesses in the state. The persona he’s crafted for himself is fake, and yet somehow, he’s managed to dupe some sadly misguided people into believing that he’s making Washington State a better place to live.

How? By destroying our common wealth? Gutting public services? Wrecking representative democracy? Lowering the level of discourse with endless name calling and campaigns of harassment against elected officials and public employees?

Eyman says it’s outrageous that a business executive misrepresented himself in comment threads on a newspaper’s website. What’s even more outrageous is Tim Eyman’s giant double standard. The loophole Eyman has created for himself in his own bizarrely construed moral system is so large you could drive a Mac truck through it – to borrow a reference from one of Tim’s recent emails.

The Everett Herald has shown a light on what Kroske was doing. That’s healthy and helpful for our public discourse. What is not helpful is the campaign of harassment Eyman is trying to wage. He is purposely trying to provoke his supporters into acting like jerks. No doubt next week, he’ll selectively quote from some of the more nicely-worded nastygrams and congratulate his followers on their ability to behave reasonably in the face of bullying.

The truth is, Eyman’s his most vocal followers are the ones who are doing the bullying. They shout, they make unsupported claims, they mimic Eyman’s name calling, they express a desire to see harm come to those they disagree with. We have seen all of that, firsthand, because NPI was one of Eyman’s recent targets.

There’s nothing more American than having an opinion and expressing it. But a democracy cannot survive without majority rule, which is espoused in our Constitution, and a civil discourse. The people who call themselves Voters Want More Choices are regrettably doing all they can to undermine both.

May 4th, 2011

I-1125 appears to contain an anti-East Link clause

Rethinking and ReframingThreat Analysis

It turns out that Initiative 1125, the toll-restricting measure that Tim Eyman says he intends to qualify for the ballot this year, wouldn’t just restrict the Legislature’s ability to raise revenue for transportation projects using tolls.

A review of the measure’s text indicates it also seeks to shut down Sound Transit’s voter-approved East Link project in a dubious, iffy fashion.

(East Link is Sound Transit’s endeavor to bring light rail to Mercer Island, Bellevue, and Redmond via Interstate 90).

It’s no secret that Tim Eyman and his backers, Michael Dunmire and Kemper Freeman, Jr., despise Sound Transit.

Dunmire and Freeman actually took Sound Transit to court last year to seek a ruling preventing the Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge from being used for East Link, even though the bridge was mostly built using federal dollars and the stipulation that part of the bridge deck be turned over to rail transit as soon as possible.

The Supreme Court just last week dismissed that lawsuit, but Dunmire, Freeman, and Eyman are undeterred.

The pertinent section of I-1125 is as follows:

NEW SECTION. Sec. 3. State government, the department of transportation, and other agencies may not transfer or use gas-tax-funded or toll-funded lanes on state highways for non-highway purposes.

Translation: No portion of a state highway can be dedicated to high-capacity transit, period, even if the state is compensated for the portion of the highway that it turns over (the wording above spells out no exceptions).

This section is meant to mess with East Link, but what Eyman and the law firm he retains don’t take into account is that Interstate 90 is a federally designated highway. The section that runs from Seattle to just east of Spokane is owned and operated by Washington State, but it was built with federal money and belongs to the Interstate Highway System. Consequently, the state cannot simply do whatever it wants with I-90, even though it is responsible for the aforementioned portion of I-90.

Decades ago, when Tim Eyman was just a boy, the state, King County, and the cities of Mercer Island and Bellevue signed an agreement which explicitly stated that the bridge deck would be built so that the portion now known as the express lanes could be dedicated to rail transit:

The I-90 facility shall be designed and constructed so that conversion of all or part of the transit roadway to fixed guideway is possible.

An update to this 1976 agreement, signed in 2004 by the aforementioned parties and Sound Transit, laid out a specific plan for making this conversion, which is presently being carried out. Eyman and his wealthy backers desperately want to nix the plan before Sound Transit can get East Link off the ground.

If passed and enforced, I-1125 would also presumably prevent light rail from being added to the new Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, which is currently being designed to replace the existing SR-520 facility over Lake Washington.

April 12th, 2011

The Associated Press: Tim Eyman’s P.R. agency

Rethinking and Reframing

Researchers looking for evidence that American traditional media is effectively brain-dead need look no further than the Seattle and Olympia bureaus of The Associated Press, which inexplicably continue to put garbage like the following out on the wire for member newspapers and broadcast outlets to use:

SEATTLE — Initiative activist Tim Eyman won a $20,000 award from the Sam Adams Alliance. The group calls him a modern day Sam Adams for his commitment to cutting the size of government in Washington state.

The Seattle Times reports the “Sammies” awards were handed out Friday in Chicago.

Eyman sponsored I-1053, which reinstated the requirement of a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to raise taxes.

—

Information from: The Seattle Times

That’s it. The above isn’t an excerpt – that’s literally all there is.

As best we can tell, the source for this P.R. piece is a blog post on Politics Northwest by Seattle Times reporter Jim Brunner. The post describes a national right wing outfit’s decision to take pity on Tim Eyman and dump $20,000 into his coffers, as well as present him with a commendation for doing such a fine job of wrecking government in Washington State so it can’t work like it’s supposed to.

The post isn’t very long. It’s what many folks – including the team at NPI – would consider to be standard fare for the Seattle Times’ Politics Northwest blog. (Like many other blogs, Politics Northwest routinely covers offbeat political developments that aren’t necessarily important or newsworthy.)

Somebody at the Associated Press saw Brunner’s post, decided to rephrase a few paragraphs from it, prefixed a dateline (“Seattle”) and then put it out on the wire. Incredibly, no attempt at all was made to add any value to what Brunner reported, which didn’t deserve to be put on the wire in the first place.

All that happened over the weekend was that Tim Eyman got a five-figure check and an “attaboy” from fellow followers of Grover Norquist. That’s nothing remarkable. Tim regularly takes in large contributions from deep pocketed corporations and cash-rich right wing groups – his initiative factory couldn’t survive without them.

Even using Eyman’s fortunate Friday to generate a lengthy profile of Eyman would have been an indefensible idea. But the person who generated this tripe didn’t even do that. It’s so worthless that it can’t even be called a semblance of an article or a report. The average Tim Eyman email contains more depth than what’s in the blockquote above, and that’s saying something.

Eyman himself blogs, leaves comments, and approaches reporters and editors constantly (whether they want to hear from him or not), so he hardly needs the Associated Press as a P.R. agency. But they seem to think that they’re obligated to give him publicity, as if they were under contract to promote him.

If that sounds like a harsh characterization, that’s because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Or the second.

For background, read the following:

We’ve criticized the Associated Press in the past for similar tripe mostly related to Eyman’s activities, but they’ve shamelessly continued to generate more of it for no good reason. It’s like they don’t have anything better to do.

But of course that’s not the case. There’s legitimate news out there that needs to be reported, but is getting ignored or being given short shrift because the Associated Press’ employees have forgotten how to be journalists.

Instead of providing quality coverage of the 2011 legislative session or seeking to deepen public awareness of ongoing societal problems like crime or pollution, they’re celebrating Tim Eyman’s weekend – as if his good fortune was an important breaking news alert that needed to be communicated instantly, without being fleshed out into a proper story.

That they behave more like a P.R. agency for colorful characters they find fascinating, rather than a professional news organization (which is what they say they are) shows just how poor their content has become.

This has to be the dumbest AP article — ever

March 28th, 2011

Tim Eyman’s desperation is showing

Rethinking and ReframingStatements & Advisories

This afternoon, Tim Eyman sent out a fourth consecutive email begging for money and instructing his followers to send messages of condemnation to NPI’s founder, Andrew Villeneuve, and Olympia City Council candidate Brian Tomlinson. Andrew composed the following statement in response.

After all these years, it’s kinda funny that we have suddenly become the object of Tim’s attention. His desperation is showing. We simply pointed out that the gears of his initiative factory cannot turn without cash from a wealthy benefactor, something we’ve said previously on many occasions. If you read his emails – which he claims to have carbon copied to the press and to lawmakers – you’ll notice he does not even attempt to refute what we’re saying. That’s because he knows he can’t. If he tried, he’d be contradicting his own reporting to the PDC.

So instead, he’s playing the victim. Trying to make it look like we’re picking on him. According to Eyman, we are “arrogant” and “hate-filled” and our reports on his activities amount to “gloating”. (Other nouns and adjectives Eyman has used include: anger, spite, negativity, ugliness, vile, mocking).

And, of course, Eyman describes his own followers as “coming back with grace and good humor”. That’s an interesting choice of words, considering we have received several obscenity-laden emails from Eyman followers, some of whom can’t even spell their hero’s name correctly. Oddly enough, Tim hasn’t shared those.

Eyman has also described his supporters as passionate. That’s a characterization that my team and I can agree with, and respect. We’re passionate too: passionate about protecting Washington’s common wealth, our quality of life, and our tradition of majority rule, which has served us well since statehood.

We believe Tim knows full well that we try to practice what we preach at NPI. We do not publish people’s private contact information online for the world to see. We do not lace what we publish with profanity. We do not wish harm upon people we disagree with. Our Code of Ethics forbids it.

And yet, Tim has repeatedly suggested that we’re full of hate.

Why is he doing this? Because he needs money. He chose to put himself in debt to get I-1053 on the ballot. Now he’s trying to pay it off, and raise money for his next initiative campaign at the same time. It’s been slow going. And so he’s getting desperate. A few weeks ago, he told his followers that he was ‘hitting the big panic button’, trying to compel them to open their checkbooks.

Now he’s on to his next gimmick: Using us as a punching bag. He figures his followers are more likely to give him money if they’re riled up, versus being calm. Perhaps he’ll get a few checks out of this, but we seriously doubt these gimmicks will help him secure the money that he really needs.

He just doesn’t have the huge base of support he claims to have.

If history is any indication, Eyman will not be back on the statewide ballot until he has a sugar daddy again – old or new. We think it’s likely Eyman will ultimately find a new wealthy benefactor.

What else is he going to do? Go back to selling fraternity wristwatches? In the meantime, it looks like we the taxpayers may be able to save some money on elections costs, which is great. We need every penny we can get these days.

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