Тимоти Эйман: Активист против налогов и его инициативы в Вашингтоне

Anti tax activist, businessman (born 1965)

Timothy Donald Eyman (born December 22, 1965) is an American anti tax activist and businessman. Since 1997, Eyman has become the most prolific sponsor of Washington ballot measures in its history, having qualified seventeen statewide initiatives. Eleven initiatives were passed by voters, though most of these in turn were later partially or wholly overturned by courts as unconstitutional. It was ruled unconstitutional in 2020. In February 2021, Eyman was convicted of violations of campaign finance law and fined $2.6 million, and barred from "managing, controlling, negotiating, or directing financial transactions" for any kind of political committee. In April 2021, he was ordered to pay an additional $2.9 million to reimburse the Washington State Attorney General's legal costs

Timothy Donald Eyman was born in Yakima, Washington and adopted shortly after birth. He graduated from Yakima's West Valley High School and went on to attend Washington State University (WSU) on an academic scholarship. At WSU, he was initiated into Delta Tau Delta and competed on the university's intercollegiate wrestling team, finishing third in the Pacific 10 Conference.

In 1995, while living in Seattle's Green Lake neighborhood, a King County tax proposal before voters sought to raise $250 million for a new Seattle Mariners stadium. Eyman attended a public meeting where a Seattle radio host, Dave Ross, was speaking. In an emergency session, Governor Mike Lowry and the legislature authorized King County to levy stadium bond taxes, which ended up being placed on restaurants and car rentals. Initiative 200 was approved by voters in 1998, winning 58.2% of the vote.

Inspired by the 1998 "No Car Tax" campaign slogan of Virginia's then future governor, Jim Gilmore, Eyman sponsored Initiative 695 in 1999. Prior to the passage of Initiative 695, car tab fees were 2.2% of the value of the vehicle. Initiative 695 not only cut car tabs to $30, but also required voter approval of all proposed taxes at the state or local level. After its passage, the initiative was immediately challenged by opponents, citing its effect on government budgets and its violation of a single subject rule for initiatives. The Washington Supreme Court struck the provision for voter approval of taxes, but allowed the car tab cuts to remain. Despite "Microsoft, Boeing, Weyerhaeuser, labor, and virtually every editorial page in the state opposing I 695", and more than $2.1 million spent in the campaign against it, the $30 car tab fee was formally signed into law on March 30 after a positive ruling by the courts. A January 2001 assessment by the conservative Washington Policy Center of the measure's effect claimed a net savings of $750 million in the first year, and twenty one predictions made by opponents had not materialized. Eyman's work on Initiative 695 in 2000 ($30 Car Tabs) was recognized by the Conservative Political Action Conference with its Ronald Reagan Award.

Following the success of that measure, Eyman established a political action committee called Permanent Offense to campaign for other anti tax initiatives. According to Eyman, his decision to begin paying himself was due to the time he had invested into campaigning that had resulted in a loss of income from his watch business. Eyman has been the primary sponsor of ballot initiatives concerning taxes and transportation almost every year since the passage of Initiative 695. Of seventeen initiatives that qualified for the ballot, eleven were passed by vote, however, a majority of those were subsequently overturned or partially invalidated in subsequent court action.

Eyman has previously described himself as an "independent Republican", also noting that he is an admirer of Ralph Nader and Rob McKenna. He has been variously described by others as a "populist" and a "libertarian". Knute Berger once called him "a political player on a par with Governor Christine Gregoire and House Speaker Frank Chopp" and "the most influential conservative in the state". In a 2006 interview with the Seattle Weekly, Eyman said " there are Democrats and Republicans that really respect the initiative process. It’s those particular elected officials I admire the most, because they realize that they don’t have all the answers". Writing in 2005, David S. Broder described Eyman as "a personable young man who has made a cottage industry of organizing tax limitation initiatives".

After the implementation of the I 695 tax cuts by the legislature, many local governments raised taxes and fees in 1999 to cover the shortfall. Stating local governments largely raised property taxes to cover deficits and the legislature's use of the state budget surplus to cover shortfalls negated the need for tax increases a, Eyman sponsored Initiative 722 to reverse negate new property tax increases by capping yearly increases at 2%. The measure won 55.89% voter approval. In 2007, after the initiative was declared unconstitutional by the Washington State Supreme Court, Governor Locke called a special session of the legislature to restore the 1% property tax increase limit. It passed 39–9 in the Senate, and 86–8 in the House. It passed with 51.47%, gaining just over 900,000 votes.

Frustrated by the passage of tax increases from Governor Gregoire despite promises not to raise them, Eyman introduced Initiative 900 to increase the power of the Washington State Auditor to conduct performance audits. The initiative was approved by the voters by 56.4%, receiving nearly one million votes. A 2009 report found a mixed reception by local officials to the performance audits. In December 2013, Democratic Washington State Auditor Brian Sonntag said his office had identified almost $1.3 billion in potential five year savings and increased revenue, after doing more than fifty performance audits and reviews.

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. 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. In August 2006 a Thurston County judge blocked a tongue in cheek initiative (I 831) proposed by Seattle area computer programmer and blogger David Goldstein that would have allowed voters to criticize – or support – Tim Eyman by declaring, "The citizens of the state of Washington do hereby proclaim that Tim Eyman is a horse's ass."

In 2007, Eyman spearheaded Initiative 960, requiring a 2/3 majority for the Legislature to raise taxes and legislative approval for the state to raise fees It passed with more than 51% of the vote. The automated public notification system the initiative created a "political minefield" for legislators who proposed bills that would raise taxes or fees by creating public awareness about those costs.

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 five year timeout in 2005 by referendum, in Colorado. The initiative was rejected by voters.

Eyman joined BanCams, a local advocacy group opposed to traffic ticketing cameras, in pursuing local initiatives to ban their use in multiple Washington cities, including Monroe, Bellingham and his hometown of Mukilteo. In 2010, the legislature exercised its power to suspend voter initiatives which have been in effect for two years and suspended 2007's Initiative 960, which required a 2/3 majority in the legislature to raise taxes. In response, Eyman introduced Initiative 1053 to reinstate the 2/3 majority requirement for the legislature to raise taxes, an approach voters supported since it was first proposed in 1993. The initiative was approved by voters with the highest margin of any of Eyman's previous initiatives with a 63.75% majority.

Eyman sponsored 25 initiatives for 2012, of which only Initiative 1185 made it onto the November general ballot. It passed with 63.91% of the vote. Approximately 95% of the money to support the initiative was reportedly from "corporate behemoths such as oil companies the national beer and soda pop industries and big pharmaceutical firms."

Eyman filed Initiative 517 on April 15, 2012, to "set penalties for interfering with signature gatherers or signers." —
I 517, the "initiative on initiatives," would lengthen the amount of time initiative organizers have to gather signatures and require access to public buildings and certain pieces of private property for signature gatherers to solicit signatures. The initiative and referendum system is one of our most important democratic tools and the right of the people to petition their government should be robustly protected. While I 517 has some positive aspects, it goes too far and its impositions on private property owners will likely be struck down by the courts. I 517 was also opposed by The Seattle Times, The Columbian newspaper, The Wenatchee World, The Everett Herald, The Olympian, Washington Research Council, The News Tribune, Northwest Progressive Institute, Seattle Seahawks, Seattle Sounders FC, and many local Democratic organizations. The initiative lost by a margin of 63% 37%.

Initiative 976 again sought to cap car tabs at $30 and end transportation benefit districts and other local vehicle taxes. It passed with 53% of the vote. Like Eyman's 1999 Initiative 695 on the same topic, Initiative 976 was reviewed by the Washington Supreme Court, but the current governor of Washington declined to let it become law as the governor in 2000 did. In February 2020, the King County Superior Court largely upheld I 976, but kept the measure on hold pending a ruling from the Washington State Supreme Court. On October 15, 2020 the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the initiative by ruling it unconstitutional because it "contains more than one subject and its subject is not accurately expressed in its title". as a Republican. He formally entered the race as a Republican in a speech in his hometown Yakima, where he laid out his intention to run an aggressive campaign against Inslee, ignore his primary opponents, focus on conservative issues, and embrace the perceived similarities between him and President Donald Trump in terms of style, attitude and ability to weather attacks from the Left. During Governor Jay Inslee's 2020 shutdown of the state, Eyman used his campaign to challenge Inslee over numerous aspects of his restrictions and proclamations from his COVID 19 response, including distinguishing between “essential” and “non essential” businesses and workers, the closure of schools and the requirement to wear masks. After Inslee ordered a statewide ban on gatherings of more than 250 people to prevent spread of COVID 19, Eyman promoted a public event for which he set a goal of 251 attendees. Eyman finished fourth in the top two primary, with 6.41 percent of the vote.

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. 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.

In March 2017, The Washington State Attorney General sued Eyman for $2.1M accusing Eyman of enriching himself with money donated to initiative campaigns. The lawsuit stemmed from a 2015 investigation by the Public Disclosure Commission into Eyman's use of donations to different initiative campaigns. In February 2020, Eyman was found to have been in violation of Washington campaign finance laws for at least the last seven years, concealing nearly $800,000 in political contributions. On February 10, 2021, as a result of violating Washington campaign finance laws, Eyman was fined $2.6 million and barred from "managing, controlling, negotiating, or directing financial transactions for any political committee." In April 2021, Eyman was ordered to also pay $2.9M in legal fees related to the case; the judge described Eyman's violations as “numerous and particularly egregious” and said Eyman had used campaign contributions to enrich himself.

On February 13, 2019, Eyman was accused of stealing a $70 office chair from an Office Depot in Lacey. On February 19 the Lacey city prosecutor filed one count of theft against Eyman related to the incident. Through his attorney, Eyman released a statement that the incident was caused by his being distracted by telephone call when he returned to the store to pay for services and merchandise. The charge was to be dismissed in March 2020, under the condition that Eyman committed no criminal activity for 9 months.