Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor

If you're keeping score, 26 states have no initiative or referendum process, while 24 do.

That means Washington state is on the losing side.

I almost said we were losers, but Ann, my first wife, argued I should change that or residents of Greater Sequim would band together, like the mob in "Frankenstein," storm our castle wielding dried, pointedly sharp stalks of lavender, poking them at our windows, waving lanterns wildly, scaring the dogs, shouting obscenities ...

No, no, no. They would perhaps utter barnyard noises. Nothing more. These are, after all, the good, church-going people of Sequim. No matter their outrage, they would never behave too unseemly.

My point is the electorate in Washington needs to take fast action to revise our initiative process before Tim Eyman turns the whole thing into a joke.

Eyman already has succeeded in making a laughing stock of himself.

This is a guy who introduced one of his initiatives by dressing up in a gorilla suit. We have to be careful that he doesn't make us wear the rear half of a horse costume for his next dull idea.

In the past 10 years, Eyman has been the mastermind behind 16 ballot measures.

Well, make that more of a pea-size brain because only five of the 16 passed outright. Three others passed, but eventually were ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court.

The Legislature, defining weak-kneed political hackdom, later voted two of the unconstitutional initiatives into law because they lowered taxes. Our lawmakers didn't want to offend voters in election years and they've always been a little afraid of a bully like Eyman, who likes to think of himself as a fourth branch of government.

OK, so Eyman has won five and been awarded a couple of wins by default, which means his record is 7-9. That might make him a starting pitcher for the Mariners, but a pennant-contending team would send him down to the minor leagues.

Eyman claims to be for the tax-oppressed citizens of Washington, whom he claims are wronged at every turn by not only the Legislature but every other elected board, council or district in the state.

So far, a significant portion of his ire has concerned transportation, such as his several initiatives aimed at the auto excise tax, the vehicle registration fee - and this year's unsuccessful attempt to reduce traffic congestion by actually increasing traffic on the state's freeways.

The apparently tongue-in-cheek I-985 also would have kept traffic flowing by removing those inconvenient cameras at busy intersections, aimed to discourage speeders from running red lights.

I always have thought that Eyman's covert plan was to first remove all taxes in any form from automobiles, then from gasoline, then to remove speed limits so that he can whisk from his home in Anacortes to Olympia at 90 mph, unimpeded, with as many wild and crazy initiatives that pop into his greedy little head.

Initiatives are his business, you see. He became outraged in 2002 when it was discovered he was making money on preparing them for the ballot. So, he formed a private corporation, Permanent Offense, Inc., that doesn't have to report its earnings to the state Public Disclosure Commission.

I know how to slow him down, however.

We revise our initiative process so that no individual or corporation can submit a ballot measure within a certain time span. Make it a four-year gubernatorial election cycle.

And then no more than two initiatives could be submitted in any eligible year by a person or corporation.

Of course, there would be a grandfather clause that would make Eyman sit on the sidelines for 10 years.

Or he could run for an elective office and see if he could function as real lawmaker.



Jim Guthrie's journalism career has spanned 41 years with newspapers in California and Washington. He is interested in playwriting and poetry and lives in Port Angeles.