2000 After the implementation of the I-695 tax cuts by the legislature, many local governments raised taxes and fees in 1999 to cover the shortfall. Stating local governments largely raised property taxes to cover deficits and the legislature's use of the state budget surplus to cover shortfalls negated the need for tax increases a, Eyman sponsored Initiative 722 to reverse negate new property tax increases by capping yearly increases at 2%. The measure won 55.89% voter approval. In 2007, after the initiative was declared unconstitutional by the Washington State Supreme Court, Governor Christine Gregoire called a special session of the legislature to restore the 1% property tax increase limit. It passed 39–9 in the Senate, and 86–8 in the House. It passed with 51.47%, gaining just over 900,000 votes.
2005 Frustrated by the passage of tax increases from Governor Gregoire despite promises not to raise them, Eyman introduced Initiative 900 to increase the power of the
Washington state auditor to conduct performance audits. The initiative was approved by the voters by 56.4%, receiving nearly one million votes. A 2009 report found a mixed reception by local officials to the performance audits. In December 2013, Democratic
Washington state auditor Brian Sonntag said his office had identified almost $1.3 billion in potential five-year savings and increased revenue, after doing more than fifty performance audits and reviews.
2006 On January 30, Eyman filed an initiative and a referendum, both intended to repeal a measure which added
sexual orientation to the list of categories against which
discrimination in housing, lending, and employment is banned in the state of Washington. In addition to seeking to remove "sexual orientation" from the law, Eyman pushed an initiative that would prohibit state government from requiring quotas or other preferential treatment for any person or group "based on sexual orientation or sexual preference". Eyman had announced he would be turning in the signatures for the gay-rights referendum on June 5. Instead, he showed up at the State Capitol dressed as
Darth Vader and then announced he would turn in petitions the next day, at the deadline. He reportedly wasn't carrying any of the signatures, but instead was carrying signed petitions for another car-tab measure unrelated to the referendum. The next day, June 6, Eyman announced he had fallen more than 7,000 signatures short of the 112,440 required to get the measure placed on the November ballot. The state law that he had attempted to put to a public vote took effect on the same day. On January 9, Eyman filed an initiative to cap motor vehicle registration charges at $30 per year and repeal taxes and fees exceeding the $30 limit. On June 29, Eyman submitted 14,270 pages of signatures for this initiative to the
Secretary of State's office. On July 7, Eyman submitted an additional 2,716 pages. While at the front desk, and prior to the counting of any signatures, Eyman requested that the receptionist date stamp a piece of note pad with the number 300,353 on it. On July 23 Eyman charged the secretary of state's office with "... gross incompetence, purposeful sabotage, or blatant dishonesty" for the discrepancy of 34,347 signatures. Along with the "receipt" with the number 300,353, Eyman claimed to have kept weekly logs of the number of signatures collected, and wrote the weight (although not the number of pages or signatures) of each box of petitions on the boxes themselves. The secretary of state's office could not provide the boxes, as they were recycled upon the cataloging of the signatures. It also denied the credibility of Eyman's receipt, noting that official counting had not even begun at that point, and calling attention to their own official receipts. Eyman has been completely unable to substantiate his claim of submitting 300,353 signatures, as he claims to have not made copies of the petitions. On July 28, the secretary of state's office announced that it had conducted a random sample test of 4% of the signatures, finding an invalidation rate of 17.96%. Based upon this number, the initiative failed to make the ballot. A full check of all signatures collected confirmed this conclusion. In August 2006 a
Thurston County judge blocked a tongue-in-cheek initiative (I-831) proposed by Seattle-area computer programmer and blogger
David Goldstein that would have allowed voters to criticize – or support – Tim Eyman by declaring, "The citizens of the state of Washington do hereby proclaim that Tim Eyman is a horse's ass."
2007 In 2007, Eyman spearheaded
Initiative 960, requiring a 2/3 majority for the legislature to raise taxes and legislative approval for the state to raise fees . It passed with more than 51% of the vote. The automated public notification system the initiative created a "political minefield" for legislators who proposed bills that would raise taxes or fees by creating public awareness about those costs.
2008 In 2008, Eyman sponsored
I-985, which had the purpose to reduce traffic congestion through various means including: • Opening
HOV/carpool lanes to all vehicles during non-peak hours, where "non-peak" is defined as any time outside of 6-9am and 3-6pm on Mondays through Fridays. • Requiring local governments to synchronize traffic lights on heavily traveled arterials and streets. • Clearing out accidents faster with expanded emergency roadside assistance, which would be funded by vehicle sales tax revenues. • Restricting toll usage such that they can only be used on the freeway or bridge being tolled, with any surplus revenue to be redirected to other congestion relief efforts in the state. Eyman submitted approximately 290,000 signatures to get the initiative on the ballot for the 2008 general election. The initiative claims to follow the recommendations of a congestion study by state auditor
Brian Sonntag, but former state transportation secretary Doug MacDonald stated that there is "no connection" between the study's findings and the initiative's goals. Auditor Sonntag himself directly refuted the claim that I-985 implements the recommendations of the state congestion audit. Critics argued that opening HOV lanes to more cars would not reduce congestion, due to
induced demand, and in fact would likely cause worse congestion since rush-hour traffic typically lasts longer than 3 hours each morning and night during weekdays. I-985 would also have stalled funding for the replacement of the
Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, since the bridge's construction is currently dependent on tolls that will come from both the current bridge and the
I-90 floating bridge. Since both bridges cross
Lake Washington, requiring tolls on only one bridge would serve only to push traffic to the other. Proponents of I-985 pointed out that highways
I-405 and
SR 167 have opened their HOV lanes during non peak hours without any noticeable problems. The initiative was defeated 60% to 40% with only one of the state's 39 counties approving the initiative.
2009 In 2009, Eyman sponsored
I-1033, which would apply a cap on revenue tied to the
consumer price index and population. The bill is similar to
TABOR which was enacted in 1992, and then placed on a five-year timeout in 2005 by referendum, in Colorado. The initiative was rejected by voters.
2010 Eyman joined BanCams, a local advocacy group opposed to traffic ticketing cameras, in pursuing local initiatives to ban their use in multiple Washington cities, including Monroe, Bellingham and his hometown of Mukilteo. In 2010, the legislature exercised its power to suspend voter initiatives which have been in effect for two years and suspended 2007's Initiative 960, which required a 2/3 majority in the legislature to raise taxes. In response, Eyman introduced Initiative 1053 to reinstate the 2/3 majority requirement for the legislature to raise taxes, an approach voters supported since it was first proposed in 1993. The initiative was approved by voters with the highest margin of any of Eyman's previous initiatives with a 63.75% majority.
2012 Eyman sponsored 25 initiatives for 2012, of which only
Initiative 1185 made it onto the November general ballot. It passed with 63.91% of the vote. Approximately 95% of the money to support the initiative was reportedly from "corporate behemoths such as oil companies ... the national beer and soda-pop industries and big pharmaceutical firms."
2013 Eyman filed Initiative 517 on April 15, 2012, to "set penalties for interfering with signature-gatherers or signers."
The Columbian newspaper,
The Wenatchee World,
The Everett Herald,
The Olympian, Washington Research Council,
The News Tribune,
Northwest Progressive Institute,
Seattle Seahawks,
Seattle Sounders FC, and many local Democratic organizations. The initiative lost by a margin of 63%-37%.
2018 On March 15, 2018, Eyman introduced two referendum measures with the intent to put all or portions of a recently passed law EHB2957 that effectively phases out
non-native finfish aquaculture to a public vote. Eyman withdrew both referendum measures after
Cooke Aquaculture, the only company farming nonnative Atlantic salmon in Washington, made it clear they did not want to be associated with his referendum campaign. From Joel Richardson, Vice President of Public Affairs for Cooke Aquaculture, on the company's involvement with the campaign-- :Our company had no affiliation with this individual... Our efforts remain focused on exploring operational options which are helpful and respectful to our employees, tribal, state and community partner.
2019 Initiative 976 again sought to cap car tabs at $30 and end transportation benefit districts and other local vehicle taxes. It passed with 53% of the vote. Like Eyman's 1999 Initiative 695 on the same topic, Initiative 976 was reviewed by the
Washington Supreme Court, but the current
governor of Washington declined to let it become law as the governor in 2000 did. In February 2020, the
King County Superior Court largely upheld I-976, but kept the measure on hold pending a ruling from the Washington State Supreme Court. On October 15, 2020 the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the initiative by ruling it unconstitutional because it "contains more than one subject and its subject is not accurately expressed in its title". as a Republican. He formally entered the race as a Republican in a speech in his hometown Yakima, where he laid out his intention to run an aggressive campaign against Inslee, ignore his primary opponents, focus on conservative issues, and embrace the perceived similarities between him and
President Donald Trump in terms of style, attitude and ability to weather attacks from the
Left. During Governor
Jay Inslee's 2020 shutdown of the state, Eyman used his campaign to challenge Inslee over numerous aspects of his restrictions and proclamations from his
COVID-19 response, including distinguishing between “essential” and “non-essential” businesses and workers, the closure of schools and the requirement to wear masks. After Inslee ordered a statewide ban on gatherings of more than 250 people to prevent spread of
COVID-19, Eyman promoted a public event for which he set a goal of 251 attendees. Eyman finished fourth in the top-two primary, with 6.41 percent of the vote. ==Legal issues==