In a report released today (pdf), Public Disclosure Commission staff recommend referring the latest case against Tim Eyman to the Attorney General to pursue “appropriate legal action”:
PDC staff recommends that the Commission find that Tim Eyman, Voters Want More Choices, and Protect Your Right to Vote on Initiatives committed multiple apparent violations of RCW 42.17A as described above. Given the seriousness of the apparent violations, staff recommends that the Commission conclude that the Commission’s penalty authority is inadequate to address the violations. Accordingly, staff recommends that the Commission refer the matter to the Washington Attorney General to initiate appropriate legal action against the Respondents.
Commissioners will meet on Thursday to consider the staff recommendations. Given that Eyman is accused of laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars for both personal and political use, and that the PDC’s penalty authority is capped at a mere $10,000 fine, the Commission will almost certainly accept staff recommendations. And no, I’m not using the word “laundering” recklessly—that’s pretty much what the PDC report describes. (Other words that come to mind are “wire fraud,” “mail fraud,” “kickbacks,” and “bribery.”)
And that’s just during 2012. For me, the most gratifying finding in the staff report is the conclusion that these kickbacks had likely been going on for years:
… on multiple occasions between 2004 and 2011, after paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in committee funds to Citizen Solutions to qualify his initiatives for the ballot, Mr. Eyman then sought and received payments back from the firm ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 per campaign.
Which is exactly what I concluded back in 2006 when I wrote: “I’ve always suspected that Eyman has a financial stake in Citizens Solutions, or receives some kind of monetary ‘consideration.’” And it wasn’t a lucky guess. We knew that Eyman’s campaigns were substantially overpaying for their signatures. This was the only logical explanation why.
Hate to say “I told you so,” but… no, wait… I LOVE to say “I told you so!”
Corrupt, obviously, but illegal? Well, imagine you are a manager at a public agency or private corporation, and you extract personal payments from a vendor in return for awarding contracts. That is certainly illegal. Whether Eyman has the same legal fiduciary responsibility to the people funding his campaigns as he would to an employer, I don’t know. But there’s little question he’s violated the law in covering these transactions up.
My hope is that Attorney General Bob Ferguson throws the book at Eyman and extracts a felony plea at the very the least (under RCW 42.17A.750). I’m not so interested in sending Eyman to prison as I am in ending his corrupt for-profit initiative business, but I’d also encourage federal prosecutors to take a look at the evidence as well: For if in fact he used payments from Citizen Solutions, and to Virginia-based Citizens in Charge, to illegally cover up the I-517 money trail, then Eyman may have violated federal law too.
A civil fine, however large, clearly isn’t enough to force Eyman to obey the law—he paid a $55,000 fine in 2002 and didn’t miss a beat. A criminal conviction may be the only way insure the integrity of our public disclosure system.
He learned it from his mentors Brett Bader, Steve Sego, and John Carlson in the 1990s. No one ever busted them.
I’m ashamed of myself for what I’m imagining right now.
Poor Timmy – almost all of your unconstitutional initiatives were overturned and now we find out you are laundering money.
I always wondered why you never had a anti-money laundering initiative for state initiative campaigns. But at least we now know for sure that you are an immoral cheat and that all you care about is making money off corporate special interests. All that “populist” stuff was just a smokescreen, right?
Without the initiative process, we’d still have cannabis illegal for personal recreational use. Remember I-502?
(Other words that come to mind are “wire fraud,” “mail fraud,” “kickbacks,” and “bribery.”)
I know you’re not officially a lawyer, Goldy, so maybe I’m being too nitpicky, but why did you leave out “embezzling”?)
@2 Not me. Unlike your average conservative, I’m not a mean-spirited creature who wishes ill on others, but in all honesty, it wouldn’t ruffle my cute cottontail very much to see this grifter’s ass decorate a prison cell. What happens to his ass after he gets there … well … he is kind of handsome …
@3 “all you care about is making money off corporate special interests”
What’s wrong with that, in and of itself? I make money off corporate interests every day. (I’ve collected about $1,400 of dividends so far this month.) The difference between me and Timmeh is I take their money without doing them any favors in return. I give them the finger when I’m cashing their checks, and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it, because I’m one of their owners. That’s how capitalism works. They don’t get to choose their stockholders.
They’ll be celebrations in Poontown tonight!
@4 Who’s against initiatives? Maybe Goldy is, but I’m not. Populism is a time-honored Western tradition. Goldy doesn’t appreciate how much taking the law into our own hands is part of what we are, because he’s an Easterner. I think we should elect our judges, land commissioner, insurance commissioner, and school superintendent, too! Of course, you’ll get some bad public officials, bad public policies, and bad public management in the tumbleweed counties, but nobody forces you to live there. I would remind Goldy that without the initiative process Sea-Tac’s — and Seattle’s — minimum wage would still be $9.43. This doesn’t mean I vote for every initiative that comes along, you have to be selective — I’m automatically against anything Timmeh sponsors or supports — but it’s the process I’m defending here.
@4 — Neither Goldy, nor any one else here, has any objection to citizen Initiatives; I’ve voted for many myself.
Our issue is with Tim Eyman’s illegal abuses of our Initiative process; as Goldy noted, when Eyman got caught in the past, he just paid the fine and kept on stealing. I join with Goldy in asking for prosecution of Eyman to the limits of our laws and evidence.
OK, so when Eyman is not involved, the initiative process is OK.
@10 Goldy has railed against citizen initiatives many times. He wants to abolish initiatives. At least, that’s the impression he created.
@11 That’s like saying sex is okay if you get rid of the prostitutes.
Fortunately SoundPolitics, where Tim Eyman is a contributor, is having a robust discussion of Eyman’s tactics.
Just kidding. Their last post about anything was 40 days ago, explaining why all the restaurants in town are closing. I guess they’ve been too busy wandering around in search of a pizza place that is still in business.
“I guess they’ve been too busy wandering around in search of a pizza place that is still in business.”
Zombie (u)SP. Walks the earth not knowing it’s dead.
Timmeh is a hero to the state of Washington and the lawyers paid to defend his usually illegal referendums.
Without his efforts and our contributions, he’s only worth what any Horse’s Ass would be worth.
Yey us!! Who donated our money to his cause. We achieved our objective to increase his net worth at the expense of our own.
You libtards are defeated again!!!
Well, let’s see how all this plays out in the next few months.
@9 and others, the initiative process has had little to do with populism since the courts decided that money = speech. The initiative process has been overtaken by people and corporations with money, and money now rules the process.
The authors of the initiative process would be appalled at what their creation has become.
No indication that the Attorney General is excited, happy, sad, or particularly thrilled the commission passed the buck to their office. So when does the bell ring?
In other news, water is wet.
OK, so when Eyman is not involved, the initiative process is OK.
That was pretty sad, even by your low standards. If you ever do figure out how criminal hucksterism degrades our constitutional democracy, please let us know.
@3 and @16 — everyone should read “The Long Con,” by Rick Perlstein at The Baffler:
The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.
Modern right-wing populism and grifting grew up together, and complement each other nicely. Little Timmy just forgot to keep his swindles on this side of our laws.