On Monday, Post Alley published a post by writer and former Seattle Times opinion writer Bruce Ramsey titled “The Shutdown of Tim Eyman,” which felt to me like a deep throwback to an earlier era. That was a time when Tim Eyman used to regularly receive fawning, sympathetic press coverage in the form of columns and articles.
For many years, for example, the Associated Press would breathlessly repackage Tim Eyman emails and put them out on the wire as briefs. No opposition perspective. No discussion of the ramifications of Eyman’s awful ideas. Just Eyman’s talking points.
In 2002, I formed a project called Permanent Defense to protect Washington from Eyman’s destructive ballot measures and ensure there was a vigorous, year-round response to his bad ideas, especially in the press.
Twenty years later, Eyman is mired in an initiative drought (as Ramsey’s article pointed out), but Eyman still occasionally remains the beneficiary of columns like the one Post Alley just published.
Fortunately, Post Alley values discourse and rebuttal. So let me take the opportunity to explain several of the things that are wrong – VERY wrong – with Ramsey’s piece.
To begin with, it’s important to understand that Tim Eyman’s personal and financial problems are primarily of his own making. Ramsey’s column accepts Eyman’s notion that he is being persecuted. But that’s wrong. Eyman is being held accountable for being a serial public-disclosure law offender. There’s a difference: Eyman is reaping what he has sown.
Eyman is a liar and a lawbreaker who lies to everyone, not just the press and the public. He’s also lied to donors (including in the business community) and to many, many people in what used to be called conservative politics but could now be more accurately described as the ultra MAGA movement since its adherents and members don’t want to “conserve” anything.
It is hard to build anything truly sustainable (especially a business) on dishonesty. Tim Eyman has certainly tried, though.
Let’s look at some specific passages in Ramsey’s column that are problematic.
Passage A:
“The latest battle began in 2017, when Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued Eyman for ‘taking kickbacks from contractors, using campaign funds for personal expenses, redirecting donations made for one initiative to a different initiative,’ all the while “enriching himself while keeping his contributors and the public at large in the dark.'”
This battle actually goes back ten years, not five. Ramsey nods to this fact in another passage in his column, which follows a reference to 2002: “Ten years later, the state came down on him for what it called a kickback from a contractor Eyman had hired to collect voters’ signatures.”
That 2017 lawsuit originated from a complaint that was filed in 2012 by Sherry Bockwinkel of Washingtonians For Ethical Government, of which I’m also an officer. It became a PDC investigation in 2013, and was referred to the Attorney General for further investigation in 2015. That 2012 complaint concerned Eyman’s attempt to use money collected from one initiative campaign (I-1185) to stealthily qualify a totally different initiative (I-517) to the ballot.
I-517 was an attempt to change state laws pertaining to requirements for qualifying initiatives. If passed, it would lower Eyman’s costs, so that getting onto the ballot would be easier and cheaper for his initiative factory in the future. Our team at Northwest Progressive Institute worked with the business community and Republicans like Rob McKenna to defeat I-517, and over 61 percent of voters rejected it.
The state took no action against Eyman in 2012 at the time he committed the violations. It is not accurate to say or imply that in 2012, the state came down on him. It took years for Eyman’s conduct to be investigated and for action to be taken.
Between 2012 and 2016, several other complaints alleging FCPA violations were also filed against Eyman and his associates by Washingtonians For Ethical Government and Keep Washington Rolling. These ultimately got combined and they became the basis of another lawsuit by Attorney General Ferguson. The combined case ended in a default judgment because Eyman did not defend against the charges. He was ordered to pay a penalty in the tens of thousands.
If Eyman had followed the law and not tried to double cross people, there would have been no grounds for any Fair Campaign Practices Act complaints against him. By 2012, Eyman was a full-time politician and had been one for over a decade. He knew about Chapter 42.17A, and he willfully decided to flout it. Then he stonewalled the years-long investigation into his lawbreaking.
Passage B:
“In 2018, facing an $80,000 lawyer bill, he declared bankruptcy”
But at the time Eyman declared bankruptcy in 2018, he wasn’t actually bankrupt. That big judgment had not yet been handed down by Judge Dixon, and wouldn’t be for years. The bankruptcy was a maneuver intended to freeze Ferguson’s campaign-finance enforcement case, in effect to buy Eyman more time.
But it didn’t work. Ferguson went and got a comfort order from the federal bankruptcy judge (Marc Barreca) and the FCPA violations case in Thurston County Superior Court resumed within weeks.
Eyman then filed pleadings trying to back out of bankruptcy (demonstrating he wasn’t actually bankrupt), but the judge presciently denied his motion to dismiss. It is clear from the monthly financial reports Eyman had to file with the bankruptcy court that he was sitting on a lot of cash, at least at that juncture.
This situation didn’t last and eventually, Eyman really did become bankrupt.
Passage C:
“The state declared his other lawyer unfit to represent him, and for nine months Eyman had to represent himself pro se.”
Eyman went through a number of lawyers before becoming a pro se defendant. Either attorneys like Mark Lamb and Joel Ard found after taking him on as a client that they did not want to work with him, or Eyman didn’t like their representation. Regardless, Eyman had the financial resources to engage another attorney at the time he went pro se, but he did not.
It’s not Bob Ferguson’s fault that Eyman didn’t have a lawyer for a while. In fact, the AGO didn’t even want Eyman to become a pro se defendant. It’s also important to note that during this stretch of time, Eyman continuously had representation in federal bankruptcy court through the firm of Vortman & Feinstein.
Passage D:
“Eyman didn’t hide the funders who paid for his initiative campaigns.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong! This is actually what the 2012 complaint was about: Eyman’s attempt to get I-517 on the ballot while hiding where the money was coming from to fund the signature drive.
We also know that Eyman illegally tried to use his buddy Paul Jacobs’ “Citizens in Charge” nonprofits as passthrough entities to keep anonymous the contributions intended to go into his pockets. We have the receipts in the form of letters he sent to prospective donors promising them they could remain anonymous.
Passage E:
“The rap on Eyman was that he was making a living at it. This wasn’t forbidden, but no one had done it before.”
Wrong again. That’s not what the rap on Eyman was. The rap on Eyman was that he was double crossing people and flouting the law.
I am not sure what “no one had done it before” means. There are many ways to make a living from working in politics. It is entirely legitimate and appropriate to be compensated for one’s labor and talent. Plenty of people work in politics as consultants, or for nonprofits, or run political committees. There is nothing unprecedented about being a paid political operative. What is not legitimate is to operate dishonestly, illegally, and unethically as Eyman has been.
Passage F:
“At first, Eyman took a cut of the money he raised. In 2002 the state came down on him for that.”
The state, through then-AG Chris Gregoire, came down on Eyman not for taking a cut, but for his deception in taking a cut. Remember, at that point, Eyman had insisted he was working unpaid. Rather than announcing that he would start taking a salary, he diverted money through a shell entity (Permanent Offense Inc.) into his own pockets. He then lied to his donors, to the press, and the public about that, and only admitted he had been lying after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story by reporter Neil Modie examining the evidence of Eyman’s deception.
Passage G:
“Eyman’s final way to make a living was to ask donors for money. Donors wrote their checks to Eyman, not his political committee. Attorney General Ferguson responded to this by labeling Eyman himself a political committee. When Judge Dixon accepted that, it made Eyman’s personal finances subject to the Fair Campaign Practices Act rules.”
Most people who work in politics keep their personal funds separate from their organization’s funds. Wages and compensation are properly paid out from organizational funds and become personal funds.
Eyman, however, mixes dollars liberally. He does not follow sound practices for accounting or keeping good books, creating huge FCPA compliance issues. Since Eyman has made it extremely difficult to distinguish between what is personal and what is political, the AGO proposed that the Judge Dixon issue a ruling holding that Eyman himself was functioning as a political committee, because he was.
Eyman says it’s preposterous that a person can be a political committee, but it says right there in the law that a person can be considered a political committee.
RCW 42.17A.005 — Definitions: (39) “Person” includes an individual, partnership, joint venture, public or private corporation, association, federal, state, or local governmental entity or agency however constituted, candidate, committee, political committee, political party, executive committee thereof, or any other organization or group of persons, however organized.
A “person” includes an individual and a political committee is a “person.”
RCW 42.17A.005 — Definitions: (41) “Political committee” means any person (except a candidate or an individual dealing with the candidate’s or individual’s own funds or property) having the expectation of receiving contributions or making expenditures in support of, or opposition to, any candidate or any ballot proposition.
Notice there’s an exception in (41). If Eyman kept good books, he could argue that his personal pot of money is strictly his own individual funds unconnected to any candidate or ballot measure. But he doesn’t keep good books.
That has been his choice. AGO Bob Ferguson didn’t force him to be sloppy.
Passage H:
“The Institute for Free Speech (IFS), a Washington, D.C., organization that pushes back against the more intrusive laws, has ranked the states on a ‘Free Speech Index.’ The index ranks Washington third-lowest of the 50 states, above only Connecticut and New York, meaning that we have the third-harshest campaign-finance regime.”
The Institute for Free Speech is a right wing organization that wants to assist Tim Eyman in escaping accountability for breaking the law. Our campaign finance system is not “harsh.” It is sensible and necessary.
There’s always room for improvement, but the IFS is not a credible judge of our state’s system. They are an advocate for dark money hiding behind the mantra of “free speech,” which is now become shorthand in right wing parlance for “we should be able to say whatever we want, whenever we want, with absolutely no consequences.” That is a privilege which incidentally they think should apply only to them and not their opposition or anybody else.
Passage I:
“[Eyman’s attorney] Sanders accepts Washington’s law. His complaint is that by declaring his client a one-man political committee, the state has put him in a kind of financial prison. ‘If you can declare an individual a political committee,’ he says, ‘you can shut down any political activist you want.’”
Wrong. Merely declaring an individual to be operating as a political committee isn’t going to shut them down. Eyman is still free to fundraise for both himself and his initiative factory, and he has been doing so.
People and organizations across this state successfully comply with the FCPA on an ongoing basis. Tim Eyman has refused to. Again, the prison Eyman is in is of his own making.
The state (through its ministry for justice) merely belatedly decided to hold Tim Eyman accountable for his long history of breaking the law.
It needs to be noted that Eyman’s initiative drought has coincided with a larger dearth of direct democracy in our state. Nobody else is qualifying initiatives these days, either. There were no initiatives on the ballot at all in 2020, in 2021, or in 2022 (2020 had a referendum, but no initiatives). This is partly a consequence of the pandemic, though there are other factors.
For instance, J. Vander Stoep tried to organize a measure back in the spring to do away with our new capital gains tax on the wealthy. Given the popularity of the tax, which funds education, right-wing donors did not want to move forward with it, and the plug got pulled. Lack of donor interest stopped J. Vander Stoep, and has in the past stopped dozens of Eyman schemes that I know of which never got past the pitch stage.
Tim Eyman has always depended on very rich men like the late Michael Dunmire to keep his initiative factory running. Without their generosity, the gears of his factory cannot turn.
Even without any of AG Bob Ferguson’s accountability work in our courts, Eyman would still be “shut down” at this moment unless he had one or more wealthy whales providing him with a supply of cash. Eyman simply doesn’t have the requisite wealth to annually self-fund schemes to wreck government and defund public services.
Yep.
The real reason for fewer initiative campaigns is that they have become too expensive. You have to hire paid signature gatherers, and the other side will do so, too. The other reason is that such initiatives don’t really drive voting participation. It used to be that a party would make sure there was an exiting initiative to drive up voter participation from certain segments. That too has worn off.
Better to hire top lobbyists and contribute gobs to pliant politicians who chair committees. All in all, a positive development from the days of ballot-crowding initiatives.
Andrew Villeneuve has been Tim Eyman’s most vocal opponent for the past 20 years — apart from politicians. Villeneuve characterizes my piece as taking Eyman’s view, which I did, regarding his legal fight. By the same token, Villeneuve is taking the view of Eyman’s opponent, Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
The key issue in this case is Ferguson’s labeling of Eyman as a “continuing political committee,” which would turn Eyman’s acceptance of $837,502 in personal donations from 2014 to 2016 into political contributions, which would have had to be reported to the state, which they were not. The superior court let Ferguson label Eyman a continuing political committee, and on December 6, the Washington Court of Appeals, Division 2, went along.
Let’s unpack the argument.
Villeneuve quotes the law’s definition of a garden-variety political committee, which does include individuals. But an ordinary political committee is tied to a specific political campaign. Ferguson labeled Eyman a “continuing political committee,” which exists indefinitely. The law defines a “continuing political committee” as “a political committee that is an organization of continuing existence not established in anticipation of any particular election campaign.”
Eyman argued that he couldn’t be a continuing political committee, because he’s one guy, not a committee. This is what lawyers called a de novo issue. “No cases have addressed what constitutes a continuing political committee,” the Appeals Court said.
So they addressed it. “Eyman’s receipt of personal contributions made him a political committee,” it said. “As a result, he no longer was merely an individual — he was a committee.”
Does that stretch the law? Well, the Appeals Court said, “We must liberally construe FCPA provisions.” And they sure did that.
Villeneuve tries to minimize this by saying, “Eyman is still free to fundraise for both himself and his initiative factory, and he has been doing so. People and organizations across this state successfully comply with the FCPA on an ongoing basis.”
Eyman is not comparable to the people who are getting along just fine. He is the only one in the half-century of the FCPA who has been declared by the state a “continuing political committee.”
The Appeals Court does say Eyman can solicit money for himself, but it quickly adds that he has to set up a political committee, that the donations have to be paid to the committee, and that the committee must report all donors and donations, as well as all expenditures, to the Public Disclosure Commission. His attorney, Richard Sanders, adds that Eyman has already been forbidden to be the treasurer of a political committee, and that a political committee can’t disburse money as gifts to individuals.
It seems that Eyman can ask for money, but it’s a whole other problem for him to have any of it.
That’s true 🙂 … but I’m more than just Eyman’s most vocal opponent. I’m also his most studious observer. I believe in knowing your adversary. Consequently, I am extremely familiar with Eyman’s activities and operations.
I think it would be more appropriate to say that Ferguson has taken my view given what has unfolded. After all, Washingtonians For Ethical Government and its officers, myself included, were involved in gathering evidence, filing complaints, and sending action notices years before these matters ever got to Ferguson.
In fact, WFEG sent citizen action notices to Ferguson stating that we were going to sue Eyman over some of the committed violations we uncovered if Ferguson didn’t. See one of those notices here. Ferguson subsequently opted to file suit, exercising his authority and discretion, which meant we couldn’t.
For reference, the Court of Appeals’ ruling (which you didn’t link to) is here.
Not true. (Highlighting is mine.)
The PDC defines three types of committees: bona fide political party, ballot measure, and other. The PDC’s website explains the difference between “single year” and “continuing” designations:
There are hundreds of active continuing political committees in Washington State at this moment. Continuing political committees are one of the most ordinary types of political committees we have.
And that argument fails because, as we’ve already established, the law says a committee is a “person” or “persons,” and a person can be an individual.
“One guy” can be a political committee in Washington State.
I’ve seen, and I bet you’ve seen, committees registered that have just one person’s name on them, as treasurer and sole officer.
Since Eyman is so bent on operating as an unregistered committee, it has been necessary to subject his activities to judicial oversight.
A plain reading of the law supports the conclusion that an individual functions as a political committee when they raise and spend money that is intended to influence the outcome of a ballot measure or candidate election.
If that weren’t the case, there’d be a pretty big loophole in the law.
Within the realm of Washington State politics, Tim Eyman is functioning as both an individual and an unregistered political committee.
If he only wanted to be considered an individual under the law, he could have stopped behaving like a committee and started doing fundraising and expenditures through the proper channels.
He chose not to.
You make it sound like what’s happening to Eyman is unfair and he’s been singled out for punishment. Not so.
Actually, the inverse was true: Eyman went on breaking the law for years and nothing happened to him. The violations he was found guilty of were nearly a decade old by the time a court pronounced judgment.
Unusual problems often require unusual, even unprecedented, remedies. An unprecedented remedy isn’t inherently unfair or inappropriate. Eyman wound up declared a continuing political committee because he consistently refused to do what you’re supposed to do: keep good books of account and raise/spend money for campaigns separately from personal funds.
Wrong. (Highlighting is mine.)
Neither Dixon’s decision nor the ruling by the Court of Appeals prevents Eyman from receiving money that he has raised.
He simply has to comply with conditions first.
These conditions, incidentally, are not that unlike what anyone in a professional environment (e.g. a properly run organization with oversight) would also be complying with before receiving funds for personal use, such as compensation.
While Eyman can receive money, he can’t direct it to himself and he can’t raise it unregistered. He’s explicitly prohibited from doing that. Other people have to be involved. However, Eyman’s Permanent Offense already has a ministerial treasurer (currently Dawn Appelberg) and two officers (Sid Maietto and Larry Jensen) who are prepared to do what he wants. Eyman could receive compensation from and through Permanent Offense with Larry and Sid’s approval.
Naturally, Eyman doesn’t volunteer this information when he talks about his circumstances. It would undercut his constant efforts to throw himself a pity party. And, Eyman has chosen to focus on raising money for his legal defense. Fundraising for Permanent Offense has become a secondary priority.
Your understanding of Dixon’s judgment appears to be based on Eyman’s email missives, considering what you’ve written. But as I’ve explained, Eyman is a liar and a fabricator. He lies to everyone, including his own followers. You can’t trust anything he says no matter what beliefs you hold.
What Eyman wants is to be free of accountability and oversight. He wants to operate the way that he has in the past. And that’s unacceptable.
In closing, I’ll note that Eyman has qualified just two initiatives in the past ten years: I-1366 in 2015 and I-976 in 2018 (I-976 appeared on the ballot in 2019 and Eyman claims to have funded it with money he withdrew from his retirement accounts). This fact is compelling evidence that argument that Tim Eyman is the primary party responsible for Tim Eyman being “shut down.”
Even before Ferguson’s lawsuit in 2017 and well before Dixon made rulings that Eyman says have put him in a metaphorical jail, he was having dry years. He wasn’t able to do a signature drive in 2013, 2014, or 2016. The 2015 drive for I-1366 was funded mostly by whales Kenneth Fisher and Clyde Holland.
After the implosion of I-1366 in the Supreme Court, and after WFEG caught Eyman using Fisher and Holland’s money to do an illegal independent expenditure against Democratic legislators, Fisher and Holland closed their checkbooks to Eyman schemes. They saw for themselves that Eyman was untrustworthy and that he was not capable of getting an initiative passed that would hold up.
Eyman set the stage for his own demise through his deceit and double dealing. His electoral successes were likewise built on deception (particularly manipulative ballot titles). Ultimately, however, deception proved to be a double edged sword.
As I wrote, it’s hard to stay a going concern when dishonesty is your M.O.
Regarding the “kickback”: In 2012, Eyman’s political committee, Voters Want More Choices, paid more than $1 million to a company called Citizen Solutions to collect signatures to put Initiative 1185 (requiring a 2/3 vote in the Legislature to raise taxes) on the ballot. The company collected the signatures. Afterward, it paid Eyman a $308,185 consulting fee to drum up future business. The state called it a kickback, and said it should have been reported, which it wasn’t. Eyman said it was his money, and admitted that he kept more than $100,000 of it “to provide for my family.”
Was it a kickback? Eyman said no, and Attorney General Ferguson said yes. In its Dec. 6 ruling the Washington Court of Appeals said there is no “direct evidence” of a kickback, but that the state inferred it from circumstantial evidence. Said the Court, “We view all inferences from the evidence in the light most favorable to the State.”
Thank you, Bruce Ramsey. AG Ferguson’s endless pursuit of Eyman seems vindictive and political.
Hey Bruce, what part of “Eyman has had his day in court and could not make his case to the court’s satisfaction” do you continue not to get? Is the court — and all the courts, for that matter — therefore “crooked” because they did not deliver the outcome you and Eyman preferred? Nobody likes a sore loser, except maybe other sore losers.
Ivan, I never argued, nor implied that the court was crooked. I argued that it was interpreting the law in a way that allows the state to shut down a political activist. And yes, I am disagreeing with a court. No apologies for that.
AG Bob Ferguson truly left me mystified at his gung-ho prosecution of a company called TVI, which operated Value Village, a much loved set of thrift stores in Seattle, and Savers, in Honolulu. Since 1970, the Lake City Value Village had truly served its middle and low income community with used furniture, fixtures, and clothing. But Ferguson sued, claiming the company misled donors into thinking it was a nonprofit. I don’t see how anyone could possibly be deceived or harmed; you dropped off your donated goods, received a ticket good for a percentage off your purchase. My mothers and sisters shopped there constantly. We knew it was a for-profit; it would be impossible to pay the rent and employees otherwise. But, Ferguson sued, and as a result all Value Villages in Seattle are closed now. The State of Hawaii left them alone, and the Savers in Honolulu still serves its low-income community. Thankfully, a Washington appeals court overturned the ruling against TVI in 2019. But the damage has been done. That 1970 store is sorely missed.
Thank you Andrew Villeneuve for clarifying the misconceptions and factual error of Bruce Ramsay’s essay supporting Tim Eyman. Bruce unnecessarily makes Eyman out as being wronged by the “political” establishment. Your essay makes it clear that Eyman did none of the accounting and reporting required for running a political business. Many initiative campaigns have executive directors and staff paid by the campaign. All Eyman had to do is incorporate Permanent Offense into an organization like many others have done to run initiatives. But then we would know how much he was paid. Part of his original cachet was he was volunteering his time.
Setting aside Eyman’s legal issues, the underlying truth is that those in power in our state categorically resisted the attempts to limit taxation, even when a majority of us voted in favor of doing so. Car tabs are as expensive as ever.
Car tabs are higher than the state base rate of $30 in communities that have voted to add additional fees to build transportation projects. One good thing resulting from Eyman’s first initiative is the legislature moved to a system for more local voter control of tab fees above $30. Many of us have car tabs/registration payments that go into local transportation benefit projects. These fees are subject to our control at the local level. It ain’t great since transportation projects are so expensive and low income car owners have to pay upfront rather than on a monthly payment plan. Communities that don’t want new projects can vote down the added fee.
“Those in power in our state” are primarily our elected representatives. While the initiative process is an interesting way to bring a narrow issue out to the people, around the normal legislative process, it’s a terrible way to exert control over basic government parameters like tax funds.
If we don’t want the things we’re paying for, then let us elect representation that will write a cheaper program and reduce taxes. If we aren’t willing to do that, then let’s not pretend that we can make it all happen cheaper by cutting off tax revenue. It’s fine to bring the boom down on Eyman for his misdeeds, but we aren’t out of the woods as long as this potential remains in the initiative mechanism.
Sure, the base rate is $30, but added is the County Filing fee of $4.50, the License Service fee of $0.75 and the Service fee of $8, making the real base rate $43.25. Then you have the additional fees based on the weight of your vehicle which drive this minimally to $68.25, or more if you have a heavier vehicle like a large truck. Then added further are the Transportation Benefit fees, which are in some cities. I don’t think these fees are ever been on a ballot. In Seattle this is $80. Just check out the roads on Capital Hill if you think this money is being well spent. Finally, you pay additional fees in King, Pierce, or Snohomish counties in the form of a Regional Transit Authority Tax which also was never on the ballot, although this was what initiative measure 950 attempted to accomplish. Then there are the new increased plate fees that started in July of this year. I can’t ever recall a city ballot measure asking voters to approve fees to support road improvements, which would be added to the car tabs, but maybe Gordon White can educate me on that. What I have seen are ones that added to property taxes.
One can hardly wait for the fuel excise tax to go from $0.49 per gallon to $0.95 per gallon on January 1, 2023, which is great timing given our current and future expected gas prices.
It would be better to elect new representation that would be more fiscally responsible and would work to curb taxation (and make it less regressive). The initiative process is a very poor way to try to get this done. However, this doesn’t change the fact that is was our representatives who established the initiative process in the first place and then basically ignored and subverted the majority vote of the people when they didn’t like the results.
This is not correct. All Sound Transit taxes (the “RTA” part of your vehicle fee renewals) are voter authorized. There have been three successful votes: in 1996, in 2008, and in 2016.
Here’s the 2016 ballot title, which explicitly mentions the tax:
Thanks for clarifying, Jennifer. Got it. I had misunderstood the intent of Initiative 950.
Dear Mr Villeneuve.
You have persuaded me that there is a great deal of merit in Mr Ramsey’s POV.