I-976 for $30 car tabs just 75,000 signatures away from 2019 ballot

Although Sound Transit won its latest court battle, I-976, the initiative to take car tabs down to $30 and force the transit agency to use Kelley Blue Book values when calculating tab fees, is steamrolling its way to the November 2019 ballot.

According to initiative sponsor Tim Eyman, I-976 has attained 250,000 signatures in just the past four months. To qualify for next year’s ballot, it needs only 75,000 more signatures by the end of December.

“I don’t want anybody getting cocky, we’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s going extraordinarily well because people are just furious about how Sound Transit lied to them,” Eyman told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

RELATED: Tim Eyman explains fight for $30 car tabs

Eyman said that while Sound Transit told voters their car tabs would only go up by $80 with the passage of its $54 billion Sound Transit 3 light rail plan in 2016, people’s car tabs have actually gone up by hundreds of dollars.

Sound Transit deliberately misled voters by not telling them that it planned to use an outdated 1996 valuation system for car tab fees. The Legislature repealed that system and replaced it 12 years ago, Eyman said. He explained that this valuation system artificially inflates the values of cars far above their Kelley Blue Book values.

“Our initiative gets rid of this unfair, dishonest, artificially-inflated valuation schedule, which is causing their car tabs to be higher than what [Sound Transit] really ought to be collecting,” he said.

If I-976 gets on the ballot and passes, every car owner will pay a flat rate of $30 per set of tabs, regardless of value or weight of vehicle. The initiative also gets rid of weight fees, per-vehicles fees, and Sound Transit’s car tab taxes.

Voters would still be free to elect additional car tab fees if they so choose. ST3 was not voter-approved car tabs, Eyman said, because the vote was based on Sound Transit’s lies.

“I think it’s totally appropriate, when the government lies to you in order to be able to get a vote, it’s totally appropriate to go back to those voters and give them a second shot,” Eyman said.

Eyman also said that Attorney General Bob Ferguson has launched a “nonstop effort to bankrupt me and my family” on account of his past activity to pass initiatives that lower taxes.

“I think Bob Ferguson believes that he can sue his way to the governorship, that if he’s suing only Conservatives, then that Socialist, liberal base of his will reward him,” Eyman said.

To learn more about I-976 and to download petition forms, visit 30tabs.com.

“It’s really exciting how far we’ve gotten in such a short period of time, but we really have to push all the way until the end of December and maximize those signatures to make sure that there’s no question that this thing qualifies,” Eyman said.