Plan B: Eyman brings new initiative, and ice cream, to Olympia

Initiative 1366 promoter Tim Eyman is back at it with another proposal &#8212 two weeks after voters approved his last one. And to get the word out about the new effort, he went to Olympia and marched to Gov. Jay Inslee’s office &#8212 with a bowl of ice cream.

“The new petition that we are having has a picture of Jay Inslee on it &#8212 that we are going to be collecting signatures on &#8212 and it has a caption: Inslee comparing Washington voters to children demanding a bowl of ice cream for nothing,” Eyman told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

Monson criticized the governor after a recent comment about voters approving initiatives such as Eyman’s, which calls for a constitutional amendment that would require legislators to have two-thirds approval to pass any tax.

“If we were all offered a bowl of ice cream for nothing, we would take it,” Inslee said, noting that he has noticed this sort of behavior with Democrats and Republicans. “If we could vote for something that would seem to give us an impression that we could have a bowl of ice cream at zero cost, we probably would take it. But then we would eventually have to figure out how to pay for it.”

Dori has countered this metaphor. In short, he wants ice cream, he just doesn’t want to overpay for it.

Eyman played off the ice cream comment controversy by standing at Inslee’s office, and leaving a bowl of the dessert out for the governor.

“And we had a bowl of ice cream for the governor, and we had a spoon, and we had the whole bit, and we were highlighting the fact that voters voting six times is not a sign that voters are children,” Eyman said. “This is a sign that voters are sick and tired of having politicians like Jay Inslee say he’s going to veto taxes while running for office, but then become the greatest cheerleader for tax increases that our state has ever seen.”

A new initiative

Eyman’s antics aren’t all about frozen treats. He has filed a new initiative, and like the last one, it is aimed at limiting tax increases in Olympia. Why? It’s a Plan B in case his I-1366 doesn’t pass legal hurdles. In August, Eyman began filing “backup” initiatives with the state, in case I-1366 faced challenges.

And he was right, as the initiative is already facing legal challenges. Washington’s constitution states that amendments must come from the legislature and go to voters for approval. Eyman’s I-1366 turns that process around. It passed with just over 51 percent approval in the November election. It knocks down the state’s sales tax from 6.5 percent to 5.5 percent &#8212 unless legislators pass a constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds majority vote to raise taxes in the future.

“We believe that we did a very careful job over 2.5 years drafting that initiative to avoid all legal landmines,” Eyman said. “I don’t think there is a single, good, legal argument against it. But sometimes the courts don’t look at valid legal arguments, they make political decisions.

“It doesn’t matter what the courts say,” he added. “This has always been a battle over the 58 Democrats in the legislature that have refused over the past four years to refer the constitutional amendment to the ballot.”

Now Eyman will be out gathering signatures for his backup plan. What does the backup initiative do?

“Any tax increase they pass in Olympia only lasts a year &#8212 it expires after one year,” Eyman explained. “It puts a time-limit on tax increases.”

There is an exception, however.

“Any tax increase that gets a two-thirds vote of the legislature or of the people, they can have a tax increase of any duration,” he said. “But it’s a one-year time-limit on tax increases. It’s another way to make it tougher to raise taxes.”

And it’s just another time gathering signatures for a tax initiative.

“We did it six times, if you are going to force us to do it seven times, we will do it,” he said.

The messenger

For Dori, another lingering issue remains beyond the initiatives: Eyman.

“A lot of people say that your presence is becoming too big of a negative for all these initiatives,” Dori said.

Eyman’s initiative doesn’t only face legal scrutiny, as he is being investigated by the state’s Public Disclosure Commission over alleged violations of campaign laws. In particular, Eyman has been accused of accepting money from a paid signature-gathering firm and that he illegally used campaign funds for personal expenses. It is also alleged that Eyman schemed to conceal the exchange of money between two of his 2012 initiative campaigns, the Seattle Times reports.

The matter remains under investigation by the state’s Attorney General’s Office.

But Eyman said that he remains focused on his initiative work and trumps up the accusations to another round of attacks on him to distract from his proposals.

“It’s the same thing that has happened for 16 years,” Eyman said. “Whenever we put an initiative on the ballot, like $30 car tabs, or limits on property taxes, or making it tougher to raise taxes, the opponents want people to look at something else other than the proposal. I think voters have proven six times in-a-row that they don’t care who the sponsor is, they care about what the proposal does.

“Our opponents can talk about anything they want. If they don’t want to talk about the initiative, that’s fine,” he added. “They can talk about me all they want.”