The 2009 election may be over, but that hasn’t stopped initiative pitchman Tim Eyman from distorting the truth as he appeals to his followers to compensate him for failure.

In his latest missive, copied to the media, Eyman writes:

Over the past 11 years, we’ve sponsored 4 initiatives to reduce car tab taxes and voters got to vote on two of them:  both were overwhelmingly approved by the voters.

Eyman doesn’t name those two, but he’s talking about Inititative 695 in 1999 and Initiative 776 in 2002.

I-695 passed with 56% of the vote. If that’s overwhelming, than each defeat that Eyman has suffered at the ballot box is beyond overwhelming: I-745 was rejected in 2000 with 59.34% of the vote, I-894 was rejected in 2004 with 61.54% of the vote, I-985 was rejected in 2008 by 59.99% of the vote, and I-1033 is being rejected by 57%. And there’s a noteworthy factoid right there: No Eyman initiative has ever passed by a greater margin than any of his four defeats at the ballot.

There’s no question that I-695 passed handily. People felt the motor vehicle excise tax had gotten too high and was being collected unfairly. Presented with Tim Eyman’s all-or-nothing choice, a majority opted for nothing, not recognizing the consequences of this course of action.

But let’s look at 2002’s Initiative 776, which was on the ballot three years after I-695. I-776 passed with only 51.47% of the vote, which is hardly “overwhelming”. It is worth remembering that Initiative 776 sought to repeal vehicle fees that were only levied in four counties: King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Douglas. I-776 actually failed within King County and the Sound Transit taxing district as a whole, which spans the most urban part of King, Snohomish, and Pierce.

Even voters in Kitsap County, who were voting on vehicle fees that didn’t affect them, turned I-776 down, perhaps because they had witnessed better than anyone the consequences of I-695.

Considering his many losses and failures, Eyman should know better than anyone that voters are nuanced. If the case for preserving existing revenue or raising revenue is effectively made, people tend to vote prudently with an eye towards the future. If people can’t see the connection between their tax dollars and the services provided, they tend to be skeptical. That explains the failure of two propositions in Burien and Bremerton to raise vehicle fees.

Eyman cites this as evidence that people hate vehicle fees, but he’s being misleading… again. Surveys, such as the one Sound Transit conducted in 2007 after the failure of “Roads and Transit”, suggest people are willing to pay vehicle fees if the fees go towards services and projects that they support.

In some jurisdictions, like Seattle, levies get readily approved because people there are very concious about wanting to live in a place with a great quality of life. Elsewhere, however, people expect the case to be made to them in a campaign, and if it isn’t, they tend to be opposed in lopsided numbers. Just ask the people who run rural library districts or school districts.

This is one of the drawbacks of “budgeting by referendum”: it requires elected officials and concerned citizens to always be in campaign mode, defending the common wealth from erosion and destruction.

In debates and forums across the state, initiative huckster Tim Eyman continues to try to peddle his latest scheme to trap Washington State in a permanent recession by claiming that it will stop politicians from “creating unsustainable budgets.”

This “unsustainable budgets” talking point is a cowardly deception on Eyman’s part that not only wildly distorts history but also the impact of his own initiative.

Using data from the Office of Financial Management and the Office of the Revenue Forecast Council, the Northwest Progressive Institute recently released a chart that shows that our state’s expenditures over the last three bienniums are well within historical norms dating back more than twenty five years.

(The last three bienniums are the period of time when Eyman claimed that Gregoire and the Legislature were “overextending”).

You can see this chart for yourself at the Vote NO I-1033 campaign hub.

At this link is also an explanation of the methodology the chart uses, along with a chart that also measures taxes as a percent of personal income. That chart shows that, like expenditures, revenue is not skyrocketing at all. Washington currently ranks 35th when compared to how much other states collect in terms of state and local taxes, which means we’re actually in the bottom third of states.

You can see the numbers the expenditures chart is based on at OFM’s site.

Back during the late 1990s, when demand for services was increasing, Washington State was neglecting infrastructure investments and not keeping pace with rapid economic growth, thanks to the shortsighted limits imposed by Initiative 601, which incidentally, did not pass by a very large margin.

A series of disasters in the 2000s, including repeated flooding, a drought, and the Nisqually earthquake in 2001, made it plainly evident that Initiative 601’s inflexible restrictions were preventing the state from making the needed investments in emergency preparedness and essential public services that we all rely on in our daily lives. So the Legislature acted to suspend Initiative 601.

And the investments it made, which were badly needed and demanded by the people of this state, did not overextend the state fiscally at all, nor did they cause the budget deficit we’re seeing now. That is a myth propagated by Tim Eyman and the Washington Policy Center that should be discarded. What did cause the Great Recession was irresponsible behavior, especially by the private sector.

Ironically, Initiative 1033 is just as irresponsible as the foolish, unsound business practices and the lax oversight policies that got us into the big mess we’re in. It is simply outrageous that Eyman is marketing Initiative 1033 as a cure; it’s really a whole new disease. But he’s doing precisely that because he knows if he admits his real intentions, Initiative 1033 would never pass.

And if there is one thing Tim Eyman is good at, it is deceiving voters.

Eyman’s I-1033 makes an existing situation super-awful by robbing the state, its counties, and it cities of close to eight billion dollars over the next five years. That’s eight billion dollars that would not be invested in schools, or parks, or hospitals, or police and fire protection.

How does Eyman think these services are going to be paid for? The state just patched a massive budget deficit with a combination of cuts and federal money. If state and local government could somehow be “reformed” to provide the same level of services that are provided now with far less money, it would already have been done. Because it would have been the easiest thing to do.

What legislator wants to make painful budget cuts just for fun?

But Eyman is not after more effective government. His objective is a future with no government. That’s why his initiative funnels the money it siphons off into a wealth redistribution fund. Think of it as a reverse Robin Hood scheme.

Eyman doesn’t believe in the good old American idea of pooling our resources to get things done. Instead, like a snake oil salesman, he offers gimmicky me-first initiatives that cause problems or worsen existing ones. Eyman’s initiatives are an annual homage to greed and selfishness.

By robbing public treasuries and redistributing that money primarily to the wealthy (who own the most property), Eyman’s scheme traps us in a permanent recession we can never climb out of.

Initiative 1033 guarantees deficits forever, as long as it in effect, because it locks in all the recent cuts as the baseline for future budgets. Under Initiative 1033, Washingtonians can forget about public safety, quality public schools, a cleaner environment, well maintained parks to visit, or assistance for seniors. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. All of those services will become further underfunded and there won’t be enough money to continue employing public servants like firefighters and teachers. At some point, some of the services we depend on will simply disappear. They won’t be able to exist because there won’t be any revenue available to put into them.

Eyman is doing all he can to market his sinister scheme to a gullible public, hoping that nobody will look behind the curtain and investigate the consequences. The truth is this: Initiative 1033 kills jobs, freezes essential public services at recession levels,, and scams anyone who isn’t already a rich property owner. Our economy is already hurting enough, Initiative 1033 would kill off any chance of recovery.

Initiative 1033 is a recipe for unstable budgets and  a bankrupt common wealth that we must reject.

Tim Eyman is trying to pull another fast one.

In a message sent out this afternoon to his supporters and copied to the media, the Mukilteo initiative profiteer dismissed critiques of his latest initiative, I-1033, as “absurd”, without actually providing any cogent counter-arguments. Instead, he merely cited a chart with a couple of lines on it, and stated (in part):

This graph shows that I-1033’s opponents are laughably inaccurate when they talk about ‘cuts in government’ or ‘slashed budgets’ under I-1033 Their Chicken Little, sky-is-falling statements about I-1033 are ridiculous in light of this graph which tracks the growth of government under I-1033.

Actually, what’s ridiculous is that someone who is asking voters to trust his authorship of a change to state law would have the audacity to suggest that a couple of lines on a chart prove there’s nothing to worry about, and offer no further elaboration.

As anyone who has taken basic math knows, data is easily manipulated. The chart that Eyman linked to is  from a Washington Research Council brief and does not even attempt to examine the harm that Initiative 1033 would inflict. However, the text of the brief – which Eyman did not link to or properly cite – does talk about the fiscal harm, although analytically rather than critically. Here’s an excerpt:

Even without passage of I-1033, the budget outlook for 2011–13 is grim. While the 2009 legislature did make substantial real cuts in spending, it also relied heavily on onetime money to balance the 2009–11 budget. Incorporating the June forecast, general fund spending for the biennium exceeds revenues by $1.4 billion. In addition, $2.5 billion in federal stimulus funds are being used to sustain programs that would normally be funded through the general fund. For 2011–13 these programs will shift back to the general fund.

Using OFM’s revenue growth assumptions, general fund revenues are expected to grow by $3.5 billion from 2009–11 to 2011–13.

We have yet to see projections of “maintenance-level” cost increases for 2011–13. Looking backwards, the maintenance level increase for the 2007-09 biennium was $1.4 billion, while the maintenance level increase for 2009-11 was $2.1 billion.

With a $1.4 billion maintenance level increase, the budget gap for 2011–13 would be $1.8 billion; with a $2.1 billion maintenance level increase the gap would be $2.5 billion. I-1033 would expand these gaps to $3.8 billion and $4.5 billion, respectively.

The full brief – not a clipping of a chart – is available at the Research Council’s site.

Note the Council’s use of the phrase “maintenance level” cost increases. That refers to what is necessary to sustain the level of services that we already have. I-1033, as noted, widens the gaps. Another, and better way to put it: Initiative 1033 creates artificial deficits.

The key point that Eyman doesn’t want anybody to understand is that revenue growth does not equal growth of government. This is because, over time, the cost of providing essential services (which is the purpose and function of government) goes up, and can easily outpace revenue growth. If revenue growth isn’t keeping up with demand for services, then service levels can’t be maintained, let alone increased.

Initiative 1033 does not “manage” growth of services, it prevents any to begin with. That is the whole point. Grover Norquist clones like Tim Eyman seek to drown government in a bathtub.

I-1033 deliberately prohibits any available revenue from being invested in schools, parks, police and fire protection, etc. beyond what was invested the year before… with a small and lame amount of padding that supposedly accounts for inflation and population growth.

The reality is that there are many additional factors that cause the cost of services to rise year to year.

Commercial development, ironically, is perhaps the best example. If a business opens a new warehouse somewhere (a large building with a large impact on the community), that warehouse is going to need to be hooked up to utilities (sewer, water, electricity). Whatever municipality it is built in will also have to protect it from break-ins and fires, and will also have to pay for any wear and tear to the roads caused by vehicles going to and from the warehouse. Commercial development has a huge impact on the cost of services, yet Initiative 1033 pretends that it doesn’t.

Then there’s emergency preparedness and disaster response. Initiative 1033 doesn’t account for these factors either. It doesn’t give the state the fiscal flexibility to respond to a tsunami or a lahar, let alone put in place warning and evacuation systems that could save lives in the event of catastrophe.

Those are merely two examples.

Because it freezes services, Initiative 1033 will, over time, slowly ravage our communities. What business out there does not rely on the essential services our government provides to engage in commerce? None. All businesses depend on the basic infrastructure sustained by we the taxpayers to prosper. If that infrastructure is gutted or even neglected, it will harm business (and especially small business) thereby trapping our economy in a permanent recession.

A vote for Initiative 1033 is a vote in favor of gradually destroying our quality of life… that is NOT an exaggeration. This is an incredibly destructive, shortsighted, and cynical initiative with an attractive surface allure, hawked and marketed by Tim Eyman. Washington must reject it this November.