On a certain level, Tim Eyman is quite likable.
Sure, critics might alternatingly refer to him as a gold digger or a charlatan or a gadfly, but Washington’s most prominent anti-tax activist also is personable and engaging and quotable. You know, the things that newspaper people like to find in a subject.
So, when the Associated Press noted last week that Eyman already has filed 17 proposed ballot initiatives this year, it seemed like a good time to give him a call and provide the preacher with a pulpit.
“All we do is put ideas out there, and it’s the people who make the decision,” Eyman said. “You’ve got to start with the idea; you file ideas that you believe in and see how it comes out on the other end.”
Eyman, in his mind, plays the role of crusader. That’s another monicker frequently attached to him, and it can be either a compliment or a pejorative — depending upon who is delivering it. He has played this role for some 15 years, making it his mission to come up with an idea and gather signatures and alter Washington politics in his own small way.
Of course, there is little variety to Eyman’s proposals. This year’s batch includes working titles such as the “Taxpayer Protection Act,” “Tougher on Tolls,” and “Bring Back $30 Car Tabs.” Previous ideas have been a two-thirds majority requirement for tax increases, which voters have embraced several times, and a 1 percent limit on property-tax increases. And if more than a handful of his measures that have been approved by voters have been overturned by the courts or by the Legislature, well, that’s politics.
“They’re less about passing laws than they are about lobbying our elected officials,” Eyman said of the tension between citizens and lawmakers. “As a political activist, I recognize the way the system works, that it’s a tug-of-war. They should have to work as hard taking our money as we work in earning it.”
All of which is interesting — hey, he’s an interesting guy — because Eyman has found a way to turn that political activism into his work. “It’s not a job when you do what you love, but it’s what I do 24/7/365,” said the Yakima native and Mukilteo resident.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Eyman is, in his own way, an entrepreneur. He identified a market for his skills and he turned it into a career. But he also is the personification of how Washington’s initiative system has been bastardized.
Not about the citizens
You see, the state’s citizen initiatives long ago stopped being about the citizens. Instead, the process is now about big business and well-heeled special-interest groups, the kind that latch onto an Eyman tax-cutting proposal and provide funding to help gather signatures and provide promotional oomph. From 2009-12, he raised an average of $1.1 million a year in support of his initiatives. In 2012, I-1185, a two-thirds majority proposal, attracted $1.4 million in donations — mostly from big business.
And, despite Eyman’s self-professed altruism on behalf of taxpayers, a reasonable portion of that support winds up in his pockets. According to the state’s Public Disclosure Commission, in early 2013, Eyman was paid $112,000 for his work on the previous year’s initiatives. He was paid $85,000 in 2012 and $163,000 in 2011. The compensation comes from fundraising appeals in which, Eyman says, donors are clearly told the money will go to him and to longtime initiative partners Jack Fagan and Mike Fagan of Spokane.
Again, there’s nothing wrong with that. But after rankling his business supporters by pushing 2013’s failed I-517 (“Protect the Initiative Act”), which would have entrenched signature gatherers in front of stores and other shops, Eyman found much of his financial support had dried up last year. For the first time since 2006, no Eyman-backed measure appeared on the ballot.
All of which might explain the scattershot approach to filing 17 initiatives in the first three weeks of this year. For Eyman, the hope is that somebody with a lot of money likes them.
