Eyman Talks Car Tab Initiative, Legal Woes at Lewis County Republican Club

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In the midst of fighting tooth and nail against a lawsuit from the Washington Attorney General’s Office that could bar him from what he considers to be his calling in life, Tim Eyman is still clad in a brightly colored T-shirt stumping for his 20-year-long cause — $30 vehicle tabs. 

The embattled initiative promoter spoke at a meeting of the Lewis County Republican Club Thursday at Ramblin’ Jack’s Rib Eye in Napavine about his two newest initiatives and his years-long court battle. 

“It’ll be the third time we’re going to have a chance to vote on this thing,” he said of the $30 car tab initiative. “It’s really exciting.”

Voters passed the first initiative about 20 years ago, but it was declared unconstitutional. He attempted to run it again in 2006 and it failed to qualify for the ballot. Eyman said the initiative has been a big part of his life. 

“In a lot of ways it is a deeply personal thing for me. Twenty years ago when we first did the initiative, I walked into the secretary of state’s office and I was carrying my then 6-month-old son with me,” he said. “The shirts were a different color, I had more hair … but we walked in and turned in a half million signatures for this initiative.” 

Eyman said his son is now 20 years old and has signed the newest version of the initiative. The initiative reached 352,000 signatures to qualify for the November 2019. 

“The opposition try and make this into, ‘this is a Tim Eyman thing,” he said. “Whether you like me or dislike me it doesn’t matter. The initiative does what I think the voters want, which is to get rid of all these obnoxious taxes and fees they’ve tacked on over the years.”

Eyman said he’s working on another initiative he hopes will be on the 2020 ballot targeting “term limits for taxes.”

“We have from now until the end of December to collect those signatures,” he said. 

The initiative would put a one-year limit on any new statewide tax. The legislature would need a public vote to continue the tax, he said. 

“The idea is to put these dirty dogs on a short leash,” he said. 



Eyman has a lot riding on this initiative.

“When we first launched the initiative last April, my wife and I, we sold off our retirement fund and we loaned the campaign a half a million dollars to kickstart the signature drive,” he said. “It was by far the biggest financial risk we’d taken, but we had faith that there were plenty of people out there that really cared about this idea.”

He spent a good deal of time talking about his legal struggles, particularly a 2017 lawsuit by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson that accused Eyman of financial malfeasance based on a 2015 investigation by the state Public Disclosure Commission. 

At the end of 2018, Eyman had filed for bankruptcy and was headed toward divorce, ending his 25-year marriage. 

On Thursday, he pleaded for donations to his “legal defense fund.”

“One of the advantages you have after you file for bankruptcy, after you announce the end of your 25-year marriage, after you announce the fact that the AG is trying to take away your right to be able to participate in the political process and asking for more money than you’ll ever have, it strips away any concept of pride or shame and it puts you in a position to just have to be absolutely shameless about it,” he said. “I’m just begging you to give us money so that we can survive this thing.”

According to reporting from The Seattle Times, Eyman was accused in the AG’s lawsuit of “laundering” political donations through charities and thereby taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for his personal use. 

Eyman characterized Ferguson’s lawsuits against himself and the President Donald Trump administration as primarily political in nature. Eyman faces a possible lifetime ban on managing finances in political committees and fines if Ferguson’s legal efforts are successful.

In July, Eyman was charged after being caught on camera stealing an office chair from an Office Depot in Lacey. Eyman and prosecutors came to an agreement in which the charges were dropped if Eyman promised to not go into the Office Depot for nine months.