Judge Chris Lanese dismisses Tim Eyman's groundless legal challenge to initiative filing fee increase [View all]

by Andrew Villeneuve

Former prolific initiative promoter and office chair pilferer Tim Eyman suffered another total defeat in court last Friday when his groundless lawsuit challenging the legality of Secretary of State Steve Hobbs’ initiative reform rulemaking was dismissed with prejudice by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Lanese.

Lanese upheld recent changes to the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) proposed by Secretary Hobbs and supported by our team at NPI. One of those changes raised the initiative filing fee from $5 to $156, while another specified a new format for initiative designations. Both changes were made to mitigate abuse of the people’s initiative power by bad actors such as Eyman. (Though his initiative business is now defunct, Eyman continues to file initiative drafts that he has no resources to qualify for the ballot.)

Because Eyman wasn’t paying attention, he wasn’t aware that Secretary Hobbs had proposed these long overdue changes. As the law requires, Secretary Hobbs published multiple notices many months apart advising the public of his intent to adopt new WACs, and his office also held a hearing at which members of the public could provide input. After the conclusion of the rulemaking process, Hobbs announced that the new WACs were going into effect. So far, they’ve only taken effect for initiatives to the Legislature. They won’t take effect for initiatives to the people until next year.

Eyman asserted that Hobbs had no authority to change the filing fee, even though the law gives him that authority. Ridiculously, Eyman falsely claimed that the Legislature had reserved for itself the power to set the fee when it failed to pass Jeanne Kohl-Welles’ proposals to put a dollar amount for the fee into the Revised Code of Washington. As I explained here a few weeks ago, the Legislature’s decision not to pass those bills actually did the opposite: it left the power to set the fee in the Secretary’s hands.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2024/06/judge-chris-lanese-dismisses-tim-eymans-groundless-legal-challenge-to-initiative-filing-fee-increase.html

Too bad Timmeh.