This morning, at a press conference at his offices in downtown Seattle, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced the filing of a sweeping new enforcement lawsuit against Tim Eyman, his associate William Agazarm, and the for-profit signature gathering company “Citizen Solutions” in Thurston County Superior Court.

The lawsuit alleges that Eyman repeatedly violated the state’s public disclosure laws by shifting money from one initiative campaign to another and concealing kickbacks he received from his buddies at Citizen Solutions. Ferguson is asking for $2.1 million in penalties and injunctive relief barring Eyman from “participating in or directing financial transactions for any political committees going forward”.

“We thank Attorney General Ferguson for bringing this much-needed enforcement action,” said Northwest Progressive Institute founder and Executive Director Andrew Villeneuve, who has been organizing opposition to Eyman initiatives for over fifteen years through NPI’s Permanent Defense project. “This has been a long time coming”.

Villeneuve also serves as President of Washingtonians For Ethical Government (WFEG), which formed last year as a people’s campaign finance watchdog for the Evergreen State.

“Tim Eyman is a serial public disclosure law offender. Even after the Public Disclosure Commission announced the findings that led to this lawsuit back in September 2015, Eyman continued to violate our laws with impunity throughout 2016. He launched an illegal independent expenditure against several dozen Democratic lawmakers, failed to report that he transferred a large sum of money between two of his committees, and blatantly disregarded a number of key reporting rules.”

Seeking to hold Eyman accountable for these further violations, NPI partnered with WFEG, which filed multiple citizen’s action notices against Eyman.

NPI’s friends at Keep Washington Rolling filed an additional set of citizen’s action notices. These notices collectively resulted in three related lawsuits against Eyman and his committees by the state back in September.

Additional charges were added in late November.

“Today’s lawsuit is actually the fourth that Bob Ferguson has filed against Eyman for public disclosure law violations, not the first,” Villeneuve noted. “But it is the most significant, because in this lawsuit, Ferguson is asking for substantial penalties and an order from the court that would bar him from continuing to operate his initiative factory. The relief Ferguson is seeking here is entirely appropriate, for Eyman has been warned many times to clean up his act, and he has deliberately failed to do so.”

The investigation that led to today’s lawsuit had its origins in Eyman’s decision in 2012 to use money he raised to qualify one initiative (I-1185) for an entirely separate initiative (I-517) that he didn’t tell his donors from the business community about. In addition to using I-1185 money to qualify I-517, Eyman also pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars for his own personal use without reporting it. The money Eyman pocketed was in addition to the salary that he was collecting out of his committee funds.

NPI member Sherry Bockwinkel, who has been of vital assistance in helping unravel Eyman’s dark money web, filed a complaint with the Public Disclosure Commission in August of 2015 alleging that Eyman had violated numerous provisions of Chapter 42.17A RCW in the course of attempting to qualify I-517. The PDC opened an investigation after I-517 qualified for the ballot, which was not completed for another two and a half years.

In September of 2015, the PDC handed the case off to the Attorney General for further investigation. State attorneys were hampered in their efforts to discover the truth by Eyman’s repeated stonewalling. The state went to court to get its civil orders enforced, and finally got Eyman to turn over key documents that it was seeking last summer.

“Since 2002, NPI’s Permanent Defense has been working tirelessly to expose Tim Eyman’s lies and continued lawbreaking,” said Northwest Progressive Institute President Rick Hegdahl, a Navy veteran. “Fifteen years of work has led up to this action today by the State of Washington. On behalf of NPI’s board, I want to thank our hardworking staff for all they’ve done to fight Eyman’s awful schemes and expose his shameful lawbreaking.”

“This truly is a watershed moment in the history of our Permanent Defense project,” agreed Villeneuve. “We have been calling for Tim Eyman to be held accountable for his wrongdoing for a very, very long time. We are very glad that our Attorney General is seeking an appropriate punishment for Eyman’s many and egregious civil violations.”

“Eyman’s initiative factory was already idle; we hope this litigation results in its permanent dissolution,” Villeneuve added. “For too long, Tim Eyman has menaced our communities with destructive, unconstitutional initiatives deliberately concocted to sabotage our plan of government and destroy our public services.”

“It is time for the Eyman error to be over. Our great state should be a model for progressive governance for the rest of the country. We cannot meet our paramount duty to amply provide all children with an education without implementing progressive tax reform, and we cannot reform our tax code if it continues to be undermined by Tim Eyman initiatives.”

Initiative promoter Tim Eyman is facing new charges that he failed to follow Washington’s public disclosure laws when he set up his latest ballot measure committee (“We Love Our Cars”) after attorneys for the State of Washington filed an amended campaign finance complaint against him and his co-defendants in Thurston County Superior Court.

The amended complaint was prompted by a citizen’s action notice filed on September 16th by Washingtonians For Ethical Government (WFEG), a nonprofit founded to serve as a people’s campaign finance watchdog for the Evergreen State.

WFEG previously sent a citizen’s action notice in the spring that alleged another one of Eyman’s committees had failed to properly report an independent expenditure. PDC staff found merit to the allegations and they were incorporated into one of three complaints filed by Ferguson’s office in Thurston County Superior Court back in September.

WFEG boardmember and Northwest Progressive Institute (NPI) Executive Director Andrew Villeneuve thanked Attorney General Ferguson’s office for reviewing the allegations and determining there was sufficient evidence to file new charges.

“Tim Eyman is a serial violator of our state’s public disclosure laws,” said Villeneuve. “Even while under investigation for concealment by Attorney General Ferguson’s office, Eyman and his associates have continued to brazenly flout RCW Chapter 42.17A. When they set up their newest committee, ‘We Love Our Cars’, they failed to account for where the committee’s startup money, totaling $143,947.61, came from. The law explicitly requires that they report the source of their contributions. They didn’t do that when they set up this committee, and incredibly, they still haven’t.”

“We Love Our Cars” was formed to promote I-869, an initiative to the Legislature intended to wipe out funding for Sound Transit, Amtrak Cascades, and WSDOT’s freight mobility programs. In emails to his followers, Eyman is still regularly pitching the initiative and asking for money to qualify it, but NPI has found no evidence of a signature drive and the committee’s only reported expenditures in months have been to reimburse Eyman for travel expenses and computer and telephone expenses.

The deadline to submit signatures for initiatives to the 2017 Legislature is at the end of this month, so Eyman only has a few more weeks to pretend that I-869 is an active effort.

Eyman and his associates are already in trouble for a number of previous violations of RCW Chapter 42.17A, including violations uncovered by the Northwest Progressive Institute and Washingtonians For Ethical Government earlier this year.

As mentioned, the discovery of these violations led to the filing of three lawsuits in September by Ferguson’s office, one of which has now been amended to incorporate the new charges.

“Tim Eyman and his associates have been in politics for a long time and must be held accountable for their continued lawbreaking,” said Villeneuve. “They have been given many, many chances to voluntarily comply with the reporting requirements of RCW Chapter 42.17A and clean up their act. They have neglected to do so. Significant penalties should be imposed by the courts against them as a consequence.”

Washingtonians For Ethical Government is represented by Knoll Lowney of Smith & Lowney, PLLC. Knoll Lowney’s past 45-day notice letters have resulted in significant penalties and litigation. His 45-day notice letter against the Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) resulted in the imposition of a $584,000 penalty against the BIAW’s for-profit affiliate. More recently, his 45-day notice letter against the Grocery Manufacturers Association led to Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office litigating what it calls “the largest political funding concealment case in state history.”

Today, Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office announced that the State of Washington has filed three new campaign finance complaints against initiative promoter Tim Eyman and his associates in Thurston County Superior Court. The complaints concern violations of RCW Chapter 42.17A uncovered by NPI’s Permanent Defense, Washingtonians For Ethical Government (WFEG), and Keep Washington Rolling (KWR), which were the subject of a set of citizen action notices sent by WFEG and KWR in May and June.

RCW 42.17A.765 (4) allows a person or organization who believes Washington’s public disclosure laws to have been violated to bring a lawsuit on behalf of the state to enforce the law, but only if the Attorney General and the Prosecuting Attorney of the county in which the violation occurred are given an opportunity to sue first and choose not to do so.

The citizen’s action is a crucially important enforcement tool, because the Public Disclosure Commission can take a long time to process traditional complaints due to being underfunded and understaffed. For example, more than three years transpired before Sherry Bockwinkel’s 2012 complaint against Tim Eyman and his campaign committees was fully investigated by PDC staff and acted on by the Commission.

One year ago, in September of 2015, the PDC unanimously voted to refer that case to Ferguson’s office for further action. Ferguon’s investigators have spent months trying to acquire the evidence they need to complete their investigation, but they’ve been hindered by Eyman and his associates’ repeated refusal to cooperate. Over the summer, attorneys representing the people of Washington went to court to compel Eyman’s cooperation.

In the meantime, Eyman has continued to brazenly flout RCW Chapter 42.17A. NPI believes aggressive and timely enforcement is needed to prevent Eyman from making a mockery of Washington’s public disclosure laws, and is committed to doing its part to uncover future potential violations and laying the groundwork for speedy prosecution of those violations.

Working with Washingtonians For Ethical Government, NPI recently discovered that Eyman had once again broken the law by concealing the source of most of the funds raised by his newest political committee, We Love Our Cars, which was formed in June. This month, WFEG notified Attorney General Ferguson and King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg it plans to file suit against Eyman over this concealment through another citizen’s action.

“Tim Eyman is a serial offender who continues to violate our public disclosure laws with impunity,” said Northwest Progressive Institute founder and Executive Director Andrew Villeneuve, who also serves as a boardmember of Washingtonians For Ethical Government. “Justice is not served when it takes years for prolific violators like Eyman to be held accountable for flouting the basic reporting rules established by the people and the people’s legislators to shine a light on money in politics in Washington.”

“Fortunately, the law provides a useful tool for expediting enforcement: the citizen’s action. These complaints all appropriately began with the sending of citizen’s action notices. We thank Attorney General Ferguson for stepping up to take on these cases. We will be following future developments with great interest.”