Anti-Tax Activist Tim Eyman Loses Campaign Finance Suit

OLYMPIA, WA — Controversial anti-tax activist Tim Eyman has been ordered to pay $2.6 million and barred from handling the finances of any other political committee after a judge found him guilty of "numerous" campaign finance law violations.

It's the largest fine the state has ever levied against one person, according to Attorney General Bob Ferguson. Ferguson says the fine is justified, considering Eyman was behind "some of the most egregious campaign finance violations" ever uncovered by his office.

"After twenty years of violating campaign finance laws, including two previous judgments against him, Eyman’s day of reckoning has arrived," said Ferguson in a release celebrating the verdict.

As the Seattle Times reports, Ferguson had been seeking a fine of $7.8 million, which was ultimately whittled down to $2.6 million.

As that Times report explains, the ruling closes a long-running investigation that began back in 2012. That's when the Public Disclosure Commission commission found discrepancies in Eyman's accounting, which they forwarded to Ferguson's office in 2015. Ferguson then filed the suit against Eyman in 2017.

Thurston County Superior Court Judge James Dixon ultimately found that Eyman had failed to disclose $766,000 in campaign contributions and that he took a $308,000 kickback from Citizen Solutions, a for-profit signature-gathering firm, according to the Associated Press.

"Eyman is a repeat violator of our state’s voter-approved campaign finance laws," Ferguson said. "On multiple occasions, the state caught him illegally and intentionally concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions that ended up in his personal bank account."

As part of the case, Eyman has already paid more further than $300,000 in contempt-of-court sanctions for refusing to cooperate with Ferguson's investigation.

Eyman has long been a champion of anti-tax initiatives in Washington state, but his time in the spotlight has been fraught with controversy. In 2002, Eyman was forced to pay $55,000 after the court found he had pocketed money from initiative donations and lied about it. That case ended with him banned from acting as a treasurer on any political committee.

Ferguson says, considering how Eyman acted in the years since the first ban wasn't enough to stop his grifting. The attorney general says that's why he used this case to cut Eyman off from campaign financing entirely.

"The last time Eyman admitted intentionally violating the law, he signed a legally enforceable agreement to never again act as a treasurer on any political committee," Ferguson said. "That extraordinary remedy proved unsuccessful at stopping Eyman’s illegal conduct. Consequently, our office pursued the next logical step — a prohibition on directing the finances of any political committee."

Eyman has also made headlines in the past for less-political pursuits. In a case unrelated to Wednesday's ruling, in 2019 Eyman was caught on camera stealing a chair from the Lacey Office Depot. That case was ultimately settled out of court. Eyman maintains he had intended to pay for the chair but had forgotten.

In his decades as an activist, Eyman has sponsored several successful anti-tax initiatives. His latest, Initiative 976, passed with 53 percent of the vote in November 2019. It promised to limit car tab fees to $30 but was struck down by the Washington Supreme Court, which found the initiative misleading.