Tim Eyman

Tim Eyman (born 1966) is a conservative political activist in the U.S. state of Washington. He advocates for the restriction of state government, and lowering taxes and fees. He has written 15 initiatives and one referendum.

Initiatives

Eyman has been a proponent of many successful initiatives in the State of Washington.

To see a complete list of initiatives, go to his organization's website under "Resume" and they have catalogued all their efforts since 1995 (you can also see it here: http://www.voterswantmorechoices.com/resume.asp)

While there have been a series of recent legal actions to maintain the secrecy of the signatures on Washington Initiatives and the Initiatives sponsored by Mr. Eyman, as well as the controversial R-71, On September 30, 2010, the signatures on Eyman's Initiatives were been disclosed to the public as public records by the State of Washington by the Washington State Secretary of State Sam Reed.

2006

On January 30, Eyman filed an initiative and a referendum, both intended to repeal a measure which added sexual orientation to the list of categories against which discrimination in housing, lending, and employment is banned in the state of Washington. Supporters of the initiative argued the law it was attempting to repeal did nothing more than give preferential treatment to certain groups. In addition to seeking to remove "sexual orientation" from the law, Eyman pushed an initiative that would prohibit state government from requiring quotas or other preferential treatment for any person or group "based on sexual orientation or sexual preference. Eyman had announced he would be turning in the signatures for the gay-rights referendum on June 5. Instead, he showed up at the State Capitol dressed as Darth Vader and then announced he would turn in petitions the next day, at the deadline. He reportedly wasn't carrying any of the signatures, but instead was carrying signed petitions for another car-tab measure unrelated to the referendum. The next day, June 6, Eyman announced he had fallen more than 7,000 signatures short of the 112,440 required to get the measure placed on the November ballot. The state law that he had attempted to put to a public vote took effect on the same day.

On January 9, Eyman filed an initiative to cap motor vehicle registration charges at $30 per year and repeal taxes and fees exceeding the $30 limit. On June 29, Eyman submitted 14,270 pages of signatures for this initiative to the Secretary of State's office. On July 7, Eyman submitted an additional 2,716 pages. While at the front desk, and prior to the counting of any signatures, Eyman requested that the receptionist date stamp a piece of note pad with the number 300,353 on it.

On July 23 Eyman charged the Secretary of State's office with "... gross incompetence, purposeful sabotage, or blatant dishonesty" for the discrepancy of 34,347 signatures. Along with the "receipt" with the number 300,353, Eyman claimed to have kept weekly logs of the number of signatures collected, and wrote the weight (although not the number of pages or signatures) of each box of petitions on the boxes themselves. The Secretary of State's office could not provide the boxes, as they were recycled upon the cataloging of the signatures. It also denied the credibility of Eyman's receipt, noting that official counting had not even begun at that point, and calling attention to their own official receipts. Eyman has been completely unable to substantiate his claim of submitting 300,353 signatures, as he claims to have not made copies of the petitions. On July 28, the Secretary of State's office announced that it had conducted a random sample test of 4% of the signatures, finding an invalidation rate of 17.96%. Based upon this number, the initiative failed to make the ballot. A full check of all signatures collected confirmed this conclusion.

2007

In 2007, Eyman spearheaded Initiative 960, intending to make it harder for the Legislature to raise taxes and fees.

2008

In 2008, Eyman sponsored I-985, which attempted to reduce traffic congestion through various means including:

• Opening HOV/carpool lanes to all vehicles during non-peak hours, where "non-peak" is defined as any time outside of 6-9am and 3-6pm on Mondays through Fridays.
• Requiring local governments to synchronize traffic lights on heavily-traveled arterials and streets.
• Clearing out accidents faster with expanded emergency roadside assistance, which would be funded by vehicle sales tax revenues.
• Restricting toll usage such that they can only be used on the freeway or bridge being tolled, with any surplus revenue to be redirected to other congestion relief efforts in the state.

Eyman submitted approximately 290,000 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot for the 2008 general election. The initiative claims to follow the recommendations of a congestion study by state auditor Brian Sonntag, but former state transportation secretary Doug MacDonald stated that there is "no connection" between the study's findings and the initiative's goals. Auditor Sonntag himself directly refuted the claim that I-985 implements the recommendations of the state congestion audit.

Critics argued that opening HOV lanes to more cars would not reduce congestion, and in fact would likely cause worse congestion since rush-hour traffic typically lasts longer than 3 hours each morning and night during weekdays. I-985 would also have stalled funding for the replacement of the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, since the bridge's construction is currently dependent on tolls that will come from both the current bridge and the I-90 floating bridge. Since both bridges cross Lake Washington, requiring tolls on only one bridge would serve only to push traffic to the other. The initiative also directed no funding toward mass transit, counteracting the desired goals of the revised Proposition 1, which sought funding for expansion of light rail, commuter trains, and bus service in the Puget Sound region. Proponents of I-985 pointed out that highways I-405 and SR 167 have opened their HOV lanes during non peak hours without any noticeable problems.

The initiative was defeated 60% to 40% with only one of the state's 39 counties approving the initiative.

2009

In 2009, Eyman sponsored I-1033, which would apply a cap on revenue tied to the consumer price index and population. The bill is similar to TABOR which was enacted in 1992, and then placed on a 5 year timeout in 2005 by referendum, in Colorado. The initiative was rejected by voters.

2010

In January, Eyman and 13 other co-sponsors (Jack Fagan, Mike Fagan, Mike Dunmire, Senator Don Benton, Senator Janea Holmquist, Erma Turner, Nancy Nelson, Dagny Lord, Keli Carender, Senator Pam Roach, Rep. Matt Shea, John Ahern & Ken Morse) filed I-1053 to reinstate the 2/3's vote requirement for the Legislature to raise taxes. At that point, it hadn't been suspended by Governor Gregoire and Democrat leaders had made clear their plans. Sure enough, in March, 2010, they suspended the 2/3's and raised taxes $800 million. This energized the signature drive, even providing enthusiastic and unprecedented support from the business community. 333,000 signatures were submitted, nearly 100K more than necessary. Polls showed strong support and almost every newspaper endorsed it (Kitsap Sun, Bellevue Reporter, Federal Way Mirror, Seattle Times, Longview Daily News, Port Orchard Independent, Yakima Valley Business Times, Centralia Chronicle, Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Spokesman Review, Wenatchee World, Yakima Herald-Republic, Vancouver Columbian, Everett Herald, and others). Public labor unions made a last ditch attempt to derail it with a $1.5 million opposition campaign but I-1053 passed with 66% of the vote on election night.

In May, Eyman teamed up with Nick & Tiffany Sherwood of BanCams.com and Alex Rion of Campaign for Liberty to do a local initiative in Eyman's hometown of Mukilteo. Mukilteo Initiative No. 2 required a 2/3's council vote and majority vote of the people for red-light cameras and speed cameras and limited fines to the amount originally intended by the 2005 legislature (the least expensive parking ticket which in Mukilteo is $20). Nearly half of all active registered voters signed petitions to get it on the ballot. Despite a last minute lawsuit filed by Arizona's red-light camera company ATS to block the people from voting, a lower court judge and the state supreme court both green-lighted the public vote. It was approved with 71% of the vote on election night.

Salary Controversy

In February 2002 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Eyman paid himself $165,000 from campaign donations, while claiming to be working for free . Eyman initially denied receiving payments, but later admitted wrongdoing . The Washington State Public Disclosure Commission, the state equivalent of the Federal Elections Commission charged Eyman with diverting $233,000 from his initiative campaigns. , and Eyman eventually settled with the Washington State Attorney General's office, paying $50,000 and accepting a lifetime ban on involvement in any political committee's financial accounts . Since the settlement, Eyman's co-sponsors and chairmen in his Permanent Offense political committee became more actively involved; Monte Benham of Kennewick became the head of Permanent Offense, though Eyman remained involved politically.

External links

• Voters Want More Choices - A grassroots taxpayer-protection organization, with Tim Eyman, Jack Fagan, and Mike Fagan directing the effort.
• Permanent Defense, an opposition group working to defeat Eyman, promote the value of public services, and work for tax reform
• TaxSanity.org
• MajorityRules.org sponsored by the Taxpayers for Washington's Future
• The Battles of Tim Eyman - A documentary film about Tim Eyman

References

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