May 11th, 2012

Greedy oil industry once again propping up Tim Eyman’s initiative factory

Statements & AdvisoriesThreat Analysis

More than a month after Tim Eyman announced that he would attempt to qualify a clone of Initiative 1053 for the ballot in 2012 (I-1185), we finally know what it was that prompted him to launch his signature drive: a commitment from oil industry lobbyists to dump money into his campaign coffers.

Reports filed with the Public Disclosure Commission last night show that BP and ConocoPhillips, two of the world’s biggest oil companies, each contributed $100,000 directly to the latest incarnation of Eyman’s “Voters Want More Choices” campaign committee in April, while Tim Eyman revealed in an email to the press this morning that Tesoro and Equilon (Shell) recently sent checks for $100,000 and $50,000 to the Association of Washington Business’ political action committee, which have supposedly been earmarked to help buy signatures for I-1185 (or so Eyman claims).

“Once again, greedy multinational oil companies are underwriting Tim Eyman, lubricating the wheels of his initiative factory with barrels of cash,” said NPI founder Andrew Villeneuve. “Of the $247,285.59 raised by Eyman’s I-1185 campaign committee (“Voters Want More Choices – Save the Two Thirds”) so far, more than eighty percent of the total was contributed by BP and ConocoPhillips ($200,000). And of the $186,035 given to the AWB’s PAC that Eyman claims will ultimately be spent on I-1185, $150,000 (again, eighty plus percent) was contributed by Tesoro and Shell.”

“What are these oil companies after? It’s simple: they want to rig the system to put their own profits ahead of people and planet. They don’t want to be held accountable for the pollution that their refineries and storage tanks generate. Their executives and lobbyists are shameless swindlers who think they can buy our signatures, our votes, and our elected leaders.”

Big oil’s presence in Washington: A bit of background

BP (also known as British Petroleum): BP has the worst safety record in the oil industry, and as of 2010, is responsible for the worst environmental disaster in American history: the Deepwater Horizon gusher. The gusher, which began on April 20th, 2010, when a blowout preventer failed, spilled approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico (that’s 779,037,750 liters) until it was capped on July 15th. As a result of the spill, BP became by one account the most despised corporation in America, overtaking the likes of AIG, ExxonMobil, and Citigroup. According to the University of Massachusetts, BP is the twenty fifth largest corporate air polluter in the United States. In 2006, its facilities emitted 4.41 million pounds of toxic gas into the air. BP’s major assets in Washington State include:

  • a refinery at Cherry Point, located at 4519 Grandview Road in Blaine
  • a storage terminal in Seattle, located at 1652 SW Lander Street in Seattle

ConocoPhillips: According to the University of Massachusetts, ConocoPhillips is the eleventh largest corporate air polluter in the United States. In 2006, its facilities emitted 6.39 million pounds of toxic gas into the air. ConocoPhillips’ major assets in Washington State include:

  • a refinery in Ferndale, located at 3901 Unick Road in Ferndale
  • a storage terminal in Renton, located at 2423 Lind Avenue SW in Renton
  • a storage terminal in Spokane, located at 6317 E Sharp Avenue in Spokane

Equilon (Shell): According to the University of Massachusetts, Royal Dutch Shell is the twenty-eighth largest corporate air polluter in the United States. In 2006, its facilities emitted 2.98 million pounds of toxic gas into the air. Shell’s major assets in Washington State include:

  • a refinery in Anacortes, located at 8505 S Texas Road in Anacortes
  • a storage terminal in Seattle, located at 2555 13th Avenue SW in Seattle

Tesoro: According to the University of Massachusetts, Tesoro is the twenty-second largest corporate air polluter in the United States. Its facilities emit 3.74 million pounds of toxic gases into the air every year. Tesoro owns a refinery in Anacortes.

Data originally compiled by NPI’s Permanent Defense for StopGreed.org

“These powerful oil companies already benefit from billions in public subsidies, but that’s not enough for them,” Villeneuve added. “They don’t just want a loophole-filled tax code engineered in their favor. They want to prevent the people of Washington – and the people’s representatives – from requiring them to share in the cost of keeping our air and our water clean. That’s why they dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into I-1053 two years ago, and that’s why they’re backing I-1185 now. They’re cheaters who have a mind to keep on cheating as long as we let them get away with it.”

In the coming weeks and months, NPI will be working to hold BP, ConocoPhillips, Tesoro, Shell, the Association of Washington Business, and other corporations and corporate lobbies accountable for their involvement in I-1185.

“Washingtonians need to realize that powerful interests are trying to trick us into undermining our own plan of government, which says that our Legislature shall operate democratically, by majority vote,” Villeneuve said.

“I-1185 is a recipe for more legislative gridlock, more underfunded services, and more unemployment. That’s not what our state needs. We urge all Washingtonians to stand with us in fighting to uphold our Constitution and strengthen our state’s common wealth in this crucial election year.”

March 5th, 2012

Tim Eyman, master of shameless self-promotion, accuses Senate Democrats of having “a lack of humility and self awareness”

Rethinking and ReframingThreat Analysis

A question for Washington’s press corps: Does the email sent out by Tim Eyman today about last Friday’s chaos in the Senate sound like it was written by an adult?

Because to us it reads like a series of petty schoolyard taunts and put-downs delivered by a third-grader who absolutely refuses to play nice with others.

There’s no substance or truth in this email. It’s just an entertaining pile of meanness. The funniest bit is the last sentence of the first paragraph: “They humiliated themselves publicly but their own lack of humility and self awareness stops them from feeling embarrassed by it.”

That line describes Tim Eyman’s near-constant behavior to a T!

We wonder: How much self-awareness did Tim Eyman gain after he was forced to admit that he took his own supporters’ donations for personal gain?

Here are some of the lowlights from Tim Eyman’s email:

RE:  Olympia’s Democrats throw a childish hissy-fit on Friday, stomping their feet, spitting venom and bile, holding their breath and turning blue … all because (gasp!) they didn’t have the votes but Republicans did – and they’re STILL pouting about it

In November, if Democrats lose their majorities in the state house and/or state senate and/or lose the governorship, it’ll be because they deserve it based on Friday’s childish hissy-fit.  In multiple floor speeches, Senate leader Lisa Brown could not have been more patronizing, superior, holier-than-thou, and condescending.  Wants-to-replace-congressman-Norm-Dicks-who’s-retiring Derek Kilmer nearly bawled like a little baby girl — quivering lip and all.  Craig Pridemore was a sanctimonious blowhard who’s still “searching for a word.”  They humiliated themselves publicly but their own lack of humility and self awareness stops them from feeling embarrassed by it.

Excerpt number two:

Maybe there’s a point when even 3 Democrats get tired of the arrogant, dictatorial, slave-master method of legislative manipulation employed by Speaker Chopp and Senate leader Brown and Governor Gregoire over the past 8 years.  Maybe there’s a point when even 3 Democrats can’t just whore themselves one more time, trading their vote for a bridge in their district and selling out their principles and constituents.  Maybe there’s a point when even 3 Democrats observe the railroading of minority Republicans on a daily basis for 8 years and think to themselves “we’re not omnipotent gods, let’s give some other reform bills a chance to be considered.”

All night long on Friday, the floor speeches by Democrats were pious, hypocritical, and pathetic.  Condescending lectures about abuse-of-process were pathetic and almost laughable.

And finally:

Chris Gregoire, Lisa Brown, Frank Chopp, and the other slave-master Democrats in Olympia have ruled with an iron fist for too long.  Power corrupts — absolute power corrupts absolutely.  These immature, power-obsessed Democrats are illustrating the need for new leadership in Olympia in November.

Eyman had no comment on the particulars of the Senate Republican budget (also supported by three “Democrats”: Rodney Tom, Tim Sheldon, and Jim Kastama).

Nor did he defend Republicans’ failure to gather public input on their proposal. (Republicans pushed their ill-conceived draconian budget out of a back room and directly onto the Senate floor using a little-known parliamentary maneuver called the Ninth Order. Hours later, they voted to approve it and send it over to the House of Representatives, where it faces a very cold reception.)

Just imagine what could happen to our state if Tim Eyman’s cohorts in the Washington State Senate – including I-1053 cosponsors Don Benton, Janea Holmquist Newbry, and Pam Roach – were in charge year-round, as opposed to one day. They’d be gutting our common wealth and eviscerating vital public services under a cloak of darkness. That’s a future our state simply cannot afford.

February 21st, 2012

Direct democracy turns one hundred in Washington: Time to bring back the *citizen* initiative

Legislation & TestimonyThreat Analysis

One hundred years ago, the people of Washington prevailed upon their legislators to offer an amendment to the state’s Constitution providing for citizen lawmaking through the initiative and the referendum. That amendment, which the people adopted, was meant to give Washingtonians a stronger voice in their own government, complementing the legislative process rather than supplanting it. At many points during the last ten decades, the initiative and referendum have served as a helpful check on the Legislature, paving the way for change that otherwise would have fallen victim to dithering, inaction, or corruption.

Unfortunately, in recent years, the powers of direct democracy have been used more for ill than good, as exemplified by the emergence of Tim Eyman’s initiative factory.

Last week, Permanent Defense celebrated and commemorated its tenth anniversary, and a few days later, in honor of the one hundredth birthday of the initiative and referendum in Washington, Washington State University organized a forum on direct democracy in Olympia to ponder the question of whether the initiative process really still belongs to the people. (In our view, that’s no longer a question: the answer is no, and the evidence backing up that answer is overwhelming).

Eyman, who participated in the forum, sent out an email today attempting to portray himself as a tolerant good-guy looking out for the people’s right to make law at the ballot – ironic given that he has done more than anyone else to co-opt the initiative process on behalf of powerful interests.

His email included this paragraph worth of statistics which caught our attention:

An interesting fact: over the past 13 years, voters have passed into law 21 initiatives. Of those, 11 were liberal ideas and 10 were conservative. Of the 10 conservative initiatives, 7 of them were ours.

Since it is always a bad idea to trust Tim Eyman’s numbers, we went and looked up the electoral history ourselves. As it turns out, Eyman only fudged one number – the total number of initiatives Washington voters have passed into law over the last thirteen elections. It’s actually twenty-three, not twenty-one.

We would agree that eleven of those twenty-three successful initiatives could be described as liberal ideas – they were measures that had progressive backing. We would also agree that ten of those successful initiatives could be described as conservative ideas – they were measures with right wing backing.

However, voters also considered three measures that we don’t think correspond to ideological battle lines: I-696 from 1999 (concerned fishing restrictions), I-713 from 2000 (concerned outlawing certain types of traps), and I-872 from 2004 (concerned with creating a “Top Two” winnowing election).

The former initiative was defeated and the latter two were passed.

Furthermore, there were  fifteen other measures on the ballot over the last thirteen years that did not pass. Most of those were right wing initiatives, as the data below shows. Figures in bold denote the numbers of initiatives that voters passed; figures in roman denote the numbers of initiatives that voters rejected.

Progressive (left-wing) initiatives

  • 1999: None
  • 2000: 728, 732
  • 2001: 773, 775
  • 2002: 790
  • 2003: None
  • 2004: 297, 884
  • 2005: 336, 901
  • 2006: 937
  • 2007: None
  • 2008: 1000, 1029
  • 2009: None
  • 2010: 1098
  • 2011: 1163

Total overall: 14
Total successful: 11

Conservative (right-wing) initiatives

  • 1999: 695
  • 2000: 722, 729, 745
  • 2001: 747
  • 2002: 776
  • 2003: 841
  • 2004: 892
  • 2005: 900, 912, 330
  • 2006: 920, 933
  • 2007: 960
  • 2008: 985
  • 2009: 1033
  • 2010: 1053, 1082, 1100, 1105, 1107
  • 2011: 1125, 1183

Total overall: 22
Total successful: 10

Please note that referendum bills and referendum measures are not included in the above figures – nor are proposed constitutional amendments, which may only be put on the ballot by the Legislature, and tend to be uncontroversial.

Though the data above paints a more complete picture of our recent electoral history than Tim Eyman did in his email, it still leaves out out a lot. Without discussion and analysis, context is lacking. The lists above are analogous to a line score: they tell us what happened, but not how or why.

For instance, one important thing we can’t see from looking at these numbers is that many of the progressive initiatives that voters passed over the last thirteen years were modest in scope and did not attract particularly strong opposition.

Conversely, nearly all the right wing initiatives (both successes and failures) were deliberately written to inflict a great deal of harm to our common wealth or plan of government and, as a consequence, were fought by a series of well-organized no campaigns. Such aggressiveness by conservatives may result in a lower statistical win/loss ratio, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a profitable strategy.

To the contrary: It pays serious dividends.

That’s because even when they don’t win, conservatives still force progressives to commit substantial resources to defending the state.

And when they are successful, they can cause a lot of damage in one broad stroke, since the ramifications of their schemes are so far-reaching.

When progressives brought direct democracy here a hundred years ago, they hoped future generations would use the initiative and referendum as tools to build Washington into a stronger state. And on many occasions, the initiative has been used to allow the people to vote on ideas to improve quality of life.

But unfortunately, in recent years, the citizen initiative has turned into the corporate initiative. With the help of a rogue’s gallery of wealthy benefactors, Tim Eyman has showed how the process can be abused and hijacked to serve destructive ends: sabotaging our Constitution, crippling our common wealth, eviscerating public services, eroding public trust in government, and discouraging civility.

In between sponsoring his ill-conceived initiatives, Eyman has become a regular visitor to the Capitol Campus in Olympia, appearing at legislative hearings to denounce efforts to return the initiative process to the people and falsely accusing those in favor of reform with wanting to do away with direct democracy altogether. Were the initiative process to be more grassroots-oriented (as the framers of the Seventh Amendment intended it to be), it would complicate Eyman’s operation, which cannot run without six figure checks from wealthy benefactors.

It should come as no surprise that Tim Eyman’s unrelenting, knee-jerk opposition to initiative reform has more to do with self-interest than principles.

February 1st, 2012

Permanent Defense Tenth Anniversary celebration for volunteers and supporters a success

Announcements

On February 13th, 2012, Permanent Defense celebrated its tenth anniversary (February 2002 – Februry 2012), commemorating a significant milestone: one decade of maintaining Washington’s first list of defense against harmful right wing initiatives, especially Tim Eyman’s.

Our work is far from finished, but we had many successes to celebrate, including our recent victory over Eyman’s I-1125 last November. NPI’s staff, board, and contributors met for a special dinner celebration to mark the occasion, joined by many supporters. A brief recap of the event was published on NPI’s Cascadia Adovcate.

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.

January 10th, 2012

Tim Eyman backtracks on plan to run “Son of 1053” in 2012, now says it’s just one of several possibilities

Statements & AdvisoriesThreat Analysis

This Friday, we will be one month away from Permanent Defense’s ten year anniversary. During the last decade, we have devoted ourselves not only opposing Tim Eyman and his initiative factory, but watchdogging Eyman as well. And in that time, we’ve repeatedly caught Eyman telling his own followers and the press one thing after he had told them something very different just a few months earlier.

For instance, in 2006, we caught Eyman in a lie about the signature drive for Initiative 917, which never made the ballot. (Eyman blamed I-917’s failure on the Secretary of State, suggesting petitions had been “pilfered”, even though he was well aware that I-917 fell short because he didn’t pay for enough signatures to be collected).

It appears that once again, Eyman is being not being upfront with his supporters.

Shortly after New Year’s Day last year, Eyman laid out his plans for the next two years, blasting Governor Chris Gregoire for telling reporters she wasn’t going to allow the passage of I-1053 to dictate how she governed for the remainder of her term. Here’s a passage from his email, dated January 6th, 2011:

Four times the voters have approved the policies in I-1053. We’re going to give the voters their 5th opportunity in 2012. [Note: These figures are incorrect. There have been only three ballot measures having to do with instituting a two-thirds vote for tax increases: I-601, I-960, and I-1053. Eyman is dishonestly inflating the number].

So for the next two years, the voters will be watching Olympia to see if they got the message. If the Legislature and Governor abide by the will of the people in the next two legislative sessions, our 2012 initiative may not be as popular as I-1053. But if Olympia disregards, dismisses, or disrespects the policies, purposes, and clear intent of I-1053, the voters will surely renew I-1053’s policies a 5th time (and we’ll likely tighten the belt a notch tighter).

The following Monday (January 10th, 2011), Eyman held a press conference to affirm his plans to run a 1053 clone in 2012. Here is an exact quote from the middle of that press conference (which was attended by a number of reporters), just before Eyman staged his photo-op at the Secretary of State’s front desk.

We’re announcing today that we are filing an initiative to renew the two-thirds requirement for raising taxes [and] the requirement that the Legislature has to take a recorded vote in order to increase fees… We have learned from last year’s campaign that we weren’t able to raise enough money and organize things in one year in order to be able to get that initiative done. I took out a second mortgage on my house – that’s still outstanding – and so, we’re going to take the next two years in order to organize this effort to renew the two-thirds.

In the months that followed, Eyman sent out over a dozen emails asking his supporters for money to “renew the two-thirds” and to pay down the mortgage he took out to finance I-1053. When he unveiled Initiative 1125 on May 2nd, 2011 (which he later qualified for the ballot with Kemper Freeman’s money), he again explicitly recommitted to his pledge. From his email sent that day:

We had originally planned to simply reinstate the policies in I-1053 with a Son of 1053 initiative next year. WE’RE STILL GOING TO DO THAT.

But we’ve decided to do an initiative this year that addresses Olympia’s sidestepping of I-1053 but also brings a few urgent transportation policy decisions to the attention of the public.

However, in an email sent out to supporters yesterday, Eyman made no acknowledgment of his 2011 pledge, characterizing his plans for 2012 as “to be determined”. Here’s the relevant excerpt from the email:

 As for our initiative efforts in 2012, we want to see how the legislative session unfolds before deciding which initiative(s) will be pushed. On Friday, we filed 5 different initiatives (Son of 1053, Bring Back our $30 Car Tabs, Let the Voters Decide on Automatic Ticketing Cameras, Protect the Initiative Act, and Stop Government Fraud Act).  Each one tackles a serious public policy problem. There will likely be others. Which one(s) we’ll do in 2012 will be announced later. On several issues, Olympia isn’t listening to the people and so if they aren’t going to solve these problems, we’d like to give the voters the chance to.

So, just to recap: Tim Eyman appears to have downgraded his “Son of 1053” initiative from its status as the plan for 2012 – count on it! to Option A for 2012. Or B. Or whatever. What matters is this: Eyman has been asking his followers to give him money for an initiative he said was going to spend two years promoting. But now that initiative is just one of many initiatives that Eyman might push. What’s up with that?

A year ago, Tim Eyman stood in the foyer of Secretary of State Sam Reed’s office in the Legislative Building with Jack and Mike Fagan at his side and pledged to spend the next two years preparing to “renew the two-thirds”. We were there. We witnessed it. And we subsequently witnessed Eyman’s attempt to raise money for the effort. “We are raising funds for the next 2/3’s initiative,” Eyman said in a February 2nd, 2011 email to followers in which he declared he was “hitting the big panic button”.

If Eyman had actually leveled with his supporters and been totally honest, he would have said something along the lines of, “We’re raising money for my benefit. I’ll decide what to do with the money after  you give it to me. We might use some of it to do a Son of 1053, but we might not, because I could change my mind depending on whether a ‘super supporter’ steps up to help make this possible. Either way… please send your most generous contribution to me right now!”

But honesty is not what Tim Eyman is known for. He’s a master salesman with a gift for deception. His conscience is apparently three sizes (or maybe three hundred sizes) too small, because it only kicks in when he’s telling whoppers, and only after he’s been called out – as he was during the Initiative 747 campaign, when Christian Sinderman accused Eyman of pocketing his own supporters’ money for his personal use.

(Eyman lied to his supporters for months about taking the money before finally confessing the truth in February 2002.)

As we have amply documented above, Eyman told the press, the public, and his supporters last year that he was doing a “Son of 1053” initiative this year. He attempted to raise money for the effort. But evidently, the fundraising wasn’t going well, because Eyman quit talking about “raising funds for the next 2/3’s initiative” during the I-1125 campaign. And he’s not moving ahead with “Son of 1053” now.

It appears that privately, he is in now in auctioneer mode, attempting to sell his wares –  er, initiatives – to a sugar daddy, hence the “to be determined” posture. Eyman knows that without a sugar daddy, he can’t qualify “Son of 1053” – or any other initiative he might like to run – for the ballot. And he doesn’t want to mount a signature drive only to have it end in failure. So he is keeping his powder dry until he can close a sales pitch with a wealthy benefactor.

It’s probable than he’ll find someone… he got the gambling industry to finance I-892, Michael Dunmire to finance I-900/I-917/I-985/I-1033, big banks and oil companies to finance I-1053, and Kemper Freeman to finance I-1125.

Eyman could level with his followers about all this. But that would mean the press and the public would find out, too. He’d have to admit that his initiative factory isn’t grassroots. So he’s keeping his own people in the dark. Pretty sad.

January 9th, 2012

Whatever happened to “Let the voters decide?”

Statements & AdvisoriesThreat Analysis

Earlier today, in lieu of holding a press conference at Secretary of State Sam Reed’s office in the Legislative Building to discuss his plans for 2012, Tim Eyman drafted and began sending out an email to his followers (and the press) announcing that he intends to be active in opposing any and all efforts to raise revenue in the Legislature during the sixty-day session that begins today and will last until at least mid-March.

Emphasis is ours:

One of our top priorities in 2012 is beating back tax increases (hence our PAC’s name change to:  Voters Want More Choices “No New Taxes 2012”). That means fighting against the umpteen bills being pushed in Olympia to raise taxes (Democrats’ new income tax bill, Democrats’ new property tax increase, Democrats’ new capital gains tax bill).

But we feel it is particularly important for us to take the lead in opposing the two tax increases being put on the ballot (Gregoire’s 10% sales tax on the April ballot and her task force’s $21 billion tax increase on the November ballot). We don’t want them increased in Olympia and we don’t want them put on the ballot (and if they are put on the ballot, we want voters to vote no).

That last sentence sure is a doozy, isn’t it? But at least Tim Eyman is being honest for a change. For years, he’s falsely said or implied that he doesn’t want to make raising revenue impossible – merely difficult. He’s also said or implied that he has no objection to elected leaders asking voters to raise revenue. For instance, in 2002, just days before Permanent Defense was founded, he told the Seattle Weekly:

We’ve always contended that any tax increase that any taxing district wants to support is fine, as long as it goes to the voters.

But today, we’ve seen Tim Eyman’s true colors. Mr. “Let the Voters Decide” has just said, plainly and unequivocally, that he is against letting voters decide whether to save services that are on the chopping block. He doesn’t want to put the matter in the people’s hands. His direct democracy evangelism is a sham, and this is simply the latest proof. A true citizens should be in in charge missionary would welcome the Legislature’s interest in referring a question on any topic of importance to the people. But the initiative and referendum, to Eyman, are simply a means to an end… the end being the destruction of Washington’s common wealth.

Inflicting sabotage is always what Eyman’s initiative factory has been about. All of his initiatives have been deliberately written to cause harm.

As Eyman’s own words demonstrate, there are no circumstances under which his dogma – which he shares with his idol Grover Norquist – condone taxes being raised.

It doesn’t matter that our social safety net is in danger of being eviscerated. It doesn’t matter that Washington is failing to adequately provide for the education of its youth, as our state Supreme Court just ruled. It doesn’t matter that the state and its many local governments continue to lay off public workers, making our unemployment problem even worse. As far as Tim Eyman is concerned, an all-cuts budget would be welcome news. In fact, his goal is to ensure that this happens… he wants Washington’s government wrecked so it cannot serve its people.

The remaining reporters who still cover state affairs as part of the Capitol press corps owe it to their readers to challenge and expose Eyman when he masquerades as a proponent of direct democracy with fake slogans such as “let the people decide”. Empowerment and self-determination are the opposite of Eyman’s real agenda, and the media ought to know that by now.

January 6th, 2012

First day to file initiatives to the people in 2012 is recycling day for Tim Eyman

Threat Analysis

Today was the first day to file initiatives to the people for the 2012 ballot, and Tim Eyman took advantage, filing five different drafts electronically with Secretary of State Sam Reed’s office. The Elections Division has not yet made the drafts available for download, so we haven’t read through them yet, but we do know what they’re about.

Of the five initiative drafts Eyman filed today, four are clearly retreads of measures he’s filed before. Here’s a short history of each recycled scheme.

  • Eyman’s first draft, titled “Protect the Initiative Act” appears to be a rehashed version of several measures that he’s filed over the years, but never attempted to qualify for the ballot. Previous measures with near-identical titles sought to expand the amount of time allowed to gather signatures on a measure and make it easier for petitioners to file frivolous claims of harassment with the police. There are probably similar ideas in this incarnation.
  • Eyman’s second draft, titled “Son of 1053”, is obviously intended to be the sequel to Eyman’s unconstitutional, undemocratic I-1053 (2010), which itself was the sequel to I-960 (2007), which was based off of I-807 (2003). But even I-807 was a recycled initiative. It was a do-over of Linda Smith’s I-601, which narrowly passed in 1993 but was later suspended by the Legislature. I-601 was the right wing’s first successful effort to subvert Article II, Section 22 of the Constitution and require two-thirds votes for revenue increases.
  • Eyman’s third draft doesn’t have a title, but it’s about vehicle fees. More specifically, it’s about capping vehicle fees as thirty dollars. Where and when have we seen this movie before? Oh yeah… here! In 1999 (I-695), 2002 (I-776) and 2006 (I-917). The first of those three (I-695) was a clone of a measure Eyman had filed the year before, and the idea for that came from the gubernatorial campaign of Republican Jim Gilmore of Virginia.
  • Eyman’s fourth draft also doesn’t have a title; but it does have a subject: “automatic ticketing cameras”. This appears to be a measure that would restrict or ban red light cameras and other kinds of cameras set up to catch people who break traffic laws. It’s no secret that Eyman dislikes red light cameras (and their cousins). He tried to impose limits on cities’ deployment of red light cameras with a provision in I-985 (2008), but voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure. Since then, he’s fought cameras in Mukilteo and attached his name to anti-camera efforts in Bellingham, Longview, Monroe, Lynnwood, and Redmond.

We haven’t reviewed the “Stop Government Fraud Act” yet, but supposedly it would create a new government agency headed by an inspector general to investigate fraud. No doubt Eyman’s proposal requires some percentage of some existing revenue source to be dedicated to this new agency, much like how I-900 (2005) required part of the sales tax to go the state auditor’s office. Wonder how Tim’s going to spin this proposal? He’s always saying that government can’t be trusted. Wouldn’t creating a new government agency simply result in more government that can’t be trusted?

At a press conference in January last year, Eyman, flanked by his cohorts, said he would be running an I-1053 clone in 2012. At the time, he did not announce an effort for 2011 (though he later secured money from Kemper Freeman, Jr. to run I-1125). Unless Eyman decides to run one of these other schemes – or something altogether different – any forthcoming announcement will really just be a re-announcement of what he’s already committed to doing.

December 12th, 2011

Tim Eyman’s Mukilteo neighbors voted down Initiative 1125, official results show

Election Postmortem

A couple of weeks ago, county canvassing boards across Washington State met to finalize the results of the November 2011 general election. The certification of the election means that we finally have official results that we can analyze and study.

(It doe take a long time to count all of the votes under our vote-by-mail system – which does not have a separate deadline for postmarking ballots, unlike Oregon – but the wait is well worth it, in our view).

Prior to the deadline for returning ballots (November 8th, at 8 PM) Initiative 1125 sponsor Tim Eyman was predicting a close outcome for his own measure, only a few weeks after having boasted that it was “leading in Seattle”. On October 25th, Eyman sent out an email update to his followers, requesting that they contact as many friends and family as possible to “push I-1125 in these final days”:

RE: We need your help to push I-1125 in these final days

Even though our internal polling among likely voters shows I-1125 ahead, we know it’s gonna be close. So we need your help to push I-1125 in these final days. Email your friends and encourage them to vote for I-1125. Call your relatives and prod them to support I-1125. Talk with your co-workers and encourage them to pass I-1125.

In the end, the election didn’t up being that close – and I-1125 did not end up ahead. More than 53% of Washingtonians voted against I-1125, including majorities in key swing counties like Snohomish, where Eyman lives. Eyman may well have expected to lose Snohomish County – it’s been consistently turning his measures down in recent years (with the exception of I-1053 last year) – but what about his own neighborhood?

If Eyman is walking his talk, shouldn’t he at least be winning on his home turf… even if he’s losing greater Snohomish County?

After all, selling initiatives is his full-time gig, and it stands to reason that nowhere is it easier for him to go door-to-door than in his own precinct.

We were curious to know the answer to this question. So we checked the official results, which are broken out at the precinct level. And, as it turns out, not only did Eyman lose his own precinct (Mukilteo 18) he lost it handily. More than 54% of his civic-minded neighbors gave I-1125 a thumbs down.

Amazingly, that’s a higher percentage than the cumulative vote against I-1125 in Snohomish County (51.66%) and statewide (53.21%).

I-1125 also failed in every other Mukilteo precinct except Mukilteo 15, where it passed. Here’s the breakdown for all of Mukilteo’s precincts:

Precinct Turnout Yes on I-1125 No on I-1125
Mukilteo 1 65.16% (686 voters registered, 447 voted) 45.41% (193 votes) 54.58% (232 votes)
Mukilteo 2 59.23% (753 voters registered, 446 voted) 44.94% (191 votes) 55.06% (234 votes)
Mukilteo 3 59.92% (474 voters registered, 284 voted) 48.51% (130 votes) 51.49% (138 votes)
Mukilteo 4 62.81% (406 voters registered, 255 voted) 40.83% (98 votes) 59.17% (142 votes)
Mukilteo 5 55.39% (789 voters registered, 437 voted) 48.33% (203 votes) 51.67% (217 votes)
Mukilteo 6 53.59% (599 voters registered, 321 voted) 46.62% (145 votes) 53.38% (166 votes)
Mukilteo 7 66.11% (419 voters registered, 277 voted) 39.10% (104 votes) 60.90% (162 votes)
Mukilteo 8 64.61% (373 voters registered, 241 voted) 43.10% (103 votes) 56.90% (136 votes)
Mukilteo 9 54.25% (553 voters registered, 300 voted) 46.53% (134 votes) 53.47 (154 votes)
Mukilteo 10 43.09% (427 voters registered, 184 voted) 46.33% (82 votes) 53.67% (95 votes)
Mukilteo 11 46.35% (561 voters registered, 260 voted) 44.62% (112 votes) 55.38% (139 votes)
Mukilteo 12 60.52% (775 voters registered, 469 voted) 40.00% (182 votes) 60.00% (273 votes)
Mukilteo 13 64.52% (589 voters registered, 380 voted) 42.23% (155 votes) 57.77% (212 votes)
Mukilteo 14 55.18% (685 voters registered, 378 voted) 45.30% (164 votes) 54.69% (198 votes)
Mukilteo 15 33.13% (323 voters registered, 107 voted) 59.22% (61 votes) 40.78% (42 votes)
Mukilteo 16 54.78% (785 voters registered, 430 voted) 41.29% (173 votes) 58.71% (246 votes)
Mukilteo 17 48.06% (826 voters registered, 397 voted) 46.07% (176 votes) 53.93% (206 votes)
Mukilteo 18 54.74% (780 voters registered, 427 voted) 45.85% (188 votes) 54.15% (222 votes)
Mukilteo 19 60.18% (447 voters registered, 269 voted) 45.42% (119 votes) 54.58% (143 votes)
Mukilteo 20 44.81% (770 voters registered, 345 voted) 47.60% (159 votes) 52.39% (175 votes)
Mukilteo 21 55.10% (343 voters registered, 189 voted) 43.42% (76 votes) 56.57% (99 votes)

Thanks to the Snohomish County Auditor’s office for this data.

It’s reassuring to know that even Tim Eyman’s neighbors had the wisdom to see through his most recent scheme. I-1125 was a poorly written, thoughtlessly conceived initiative that deserved to be defeated. And thankfully, it was.

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.

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