Tim Eyman

Timothy Donald Eyman (born December 22, 1965) is an American anti-tax activist and businessman.

He received a bachelor's degree in 1988 in business management.

After graduating from WSU, Eyman began a mail order business out of his home selling engraved wristwatches to members of Greek Letter Organizations.

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.

There Eyman decided to help gather signatures at Green Lake while holding a cardboard sign reading, “Let the voters decide”, and gathered 100 signatures on his first day.

Voters ended up rejecting the tax package.

Mariners' owner Nintendo of America insisted the city provide the $250 million funding, or the team would be sold.

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.

Despite opposition from voters, the stadium now called T-Mobile Park was built and new taxes were imposed.

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.

His first and most notable success was an initiative preventing affirmative action in Washington State.

This experience drew Eyman into politics, and he often describes it as his “baptism of fire.” As he saw it, “They overruled what the voters did.” In 1997, Eyman sponsored his first ballot measure, Initiative 200, a Washington spin-off of California’s Proposition 209, which passed in 1996.

Ward Connerly, an African-American businessman and Proposition 209's sponsor, would become Eyman’s hero and inspiration for his own initiative activism.

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.

It was an Initiative to the People to lower the fee for "car tabs" (the common name in Washington for car taxes, or motor vehicle excise taxes / MVET) in the state of Washington to a flat fee of $30.

Eyman's effort to circulate petitions and gather signatures resulted in 514,141 signatures total.

Despite a broad institutional consensus in opposition – including "politicians, governments, the media, business big and small, environmentalists, civic groups, and labor" – voters approved the initiative with 56.16% of the vote, garnering nearly one million votes.

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.

While the court considered the constitutionality of the main provision, Democratic Governor Gary Locke called a special session of the legislature to pass the $30 car tab flat fee provision into law, lay out budget cuts to account for the tax reduction, and Attorney General Gregoire defended it before the court.

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.

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.

In 2000 he began taking a salary as head of Permanent Offense, receiving $45,000 that year.

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.

He has since been described as a "professional initiative filer".

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 most prominent ballot measures are part of an unsuccessful "20 year tug-of-war" with the state over lowering motor vehicle excise taxes, or "car tabs" to defund Sound Transit, under the slogan "$30 Tabs", of which 2019's Initiative 976 is the most recent.

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 in pursuing civil penalties against him.

He is currently bankrupt, and in December 2021 a court ordered sale of assets to meet $5.4m in legal liabilities to the State of Washington.

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.