Latest Tim Eyman initiative, I-1366, blocked by King County judge
The initiative that gives the Washington Legislature a choice between changing the constitution to make it harder to increase taxes or cutting the state sales tax is unconstitutional, a King County judge ruled Thursday.
King County Superior Court Judge William Downing called Initiative 1366, approved by voters in November, a thinly disguised effort to pass a constitutional amendment, something the state Supreme Court has said can’t be done by initiative.
His ruling is certain to be appealed.
“It is solely the province of the legislative branch of our representative government to ‘propose’ an amendment to the state constitution,” Downing wrote. “That process is derailed by the pressure-wielding mechanism in this initiative, which exceeds the scope of initiative power.”
The ruling is a loss for longtime initiative sponsor Tim Eyman, who expressed great confidence after Tuesday’s arguments before Downing that the ballot measure would survive, and the state attorney general’s office, which defended I-1366 as constitutional.
The lawsuit was brought by two Democratic lawmakers and the League of Women Voters of Washington, who argued that constitutional amendments can’t be proposed by initiative and the measure violates the rule that initiatives be limited to a single subject. The judge agreed on both points and found that the measure would “deprive legislators, individually and collectively, of their rights and duties.”
Eyman was testifying before a Senate panel already considering a constitutional amendment when he received a text from his lawyer with the news.
“We just got a ruling,” he told the panel. “Real-time text from my attorney, who says so eloquently, ‘We lose.’
“We obviously disagree with the judge and his decision, but it does not change what the voters decided, and I would certainly encourage this Legislature to move forward with it as it goes upward to the Supreme Court,” Eyman added. “The votes of the people didn’t change as a result of this judge’s ruling.”
Eyman, a longtime anti-tax activist, has previously sponsored initiatives requiring a supermajority vote on taxes. The state Supreme Court struck down that requirement in 2013, saying it was unconstitutional.
The Senate panel could approve a proposed constitutional amendment that complies with the initiative and send it to the full Senate. Republican leaders of both chambers have said their members have long supported a two-thirds majority for tax increases. The GOP controls the state Senate by a slim margin, but Democrats have a slim majority in the House, and they’re generally opposed to such a requirement.
Any constitutional amendment must come out of the Legislature with the same two-thirds approval I-1366 is seeking for tax increases, and securing that in a closely divided Legislature is difficult.