Outside View: Eyman’s initiative games are costly

The following is an abridged commentary from the Everett Herald. It does not necessarily reflect the view of The Spokesman-Review’s editorial board.

Initiative guru Tim Eyman’s most recent court failure was for Initiative 1366, which attempted to force the Legislature to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to require a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to raise taxes.

But recently, scores of other proposed initiatives have died, often by Eyman’s own hand, without seeing the ink from one voter’s signature. Eyman has taken to filing multiple versions of similar initiatives with the secretary of state’s office. Between January and mid-May, Eyman has filed at least 86 initiatives with the state. But 61 of those have either been withdrawn by Eyman or have expired, leaving 25 still active. All share similar ballot titles and descriptions and differ only by a few words.

This is new for the secretary of state’s office.

“There has been a big uptick in repetitive initiatives in the last year or two,” said Peter Lavallee, communications director for the state attorney general’s office. Eyman isn’t the only frequent filer, Lavallee said, but his name appears most often on the current list of proposed initiatives.

It’s all legal and allowed, Lavallee said, as long as the $5 filing fee is paid. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost associated with the multiple versions of nearly similar initiatives, most of which aren’t intended to survive long enough to gather signatures. Once initiatives are filed, staff with the attorney general’s office must draft a 10-word ballot title, a 30-word ballot description and a 75-word summary of the initiative, wording that must be objective and not appear to favor one side or the other. Once written, the initiative’s sponsors and any potential opponents are allowed to challenge the draft language and request changes.

It’s a process that Dmitri Iglitzin, an attorney for Futurewise and Keep Washington Rolling, which opposed one of the measures Eyman filed this year, said is usually collaborative but can be time-consuming and adds costs for those filing initiatives, those fighting them and for those who pay the salaries of the attorney general’s staff.

But what makes it more costly is when initiative sponsors fail to notify opponents and the courts when a proposed measure has been withdrawn. Along with I-1366’s loss in court, Eyman suffered a lesser blow last month when he was sanctioned by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Mary Sue Wilson and fined $600 after withdrawing I-1525, which sought to limit car tabs to $30. A hearing had been scheduled in Wilson’s court regarding a challenge to the proposed initiative at which Iglitzin and others had appeared.

Likewise, the judge that morning had spent 90 minutes to two hours reading briefs from each side, only to learn moments before the hearing that Eyman had withdrawn the initiative.

The $600 sanction was symbolic and doesn’t begin to reflect the costs involved for opponents, the court or the attorney general’s office and, ultimately, for the taxpayer, whom Eyman claims to be watching out for.