Eyman reports $20,000 guild gift

OLYMPIA — A jail guards’ union gave initiative king Tim Eyman $20,000 after he helped it qualify a ballot initiative to shrink the King County Council — a job he had said he was doing for free.

Both the King County Corrections Guild and Eyman said the money is strictly a gift, but Eyman said he’s reporting it to the state Public Disclosure Commission just to be on the safe side.

When Eyman helped the guild last summer, he told reporters he was working without compensation, in exchange for guild help in gaining support for his own initiative.

"When it was over, they decided to say ‘Thank you,’ " Eyman said in an interview Thursday. "I took it as a signal that they want to work with me in the future (on campaign consulting), and you treat your friends nice.

"Nothing says ‘nice’ like $20,000."

He said he’ll use the money to pay the mortgage on his Mukilteo home and for other household expenses — "not Hawaii trips or something like that."

Eyman’s Christmas stocking also will be loaded with cash from his anti-tax backers. He and two co-chairmen of his political action committee, Voters Want More Choices, will share at least $78,000 from a salary fund that continues to solicit contributions.

Asked if the guild check was a gift or retroactive compensation for his professional services, Eyman said, "Both, I guess." But he said the money was unexpected and a huge surprise, not a wink-and-a-nod prearrangement with the jailers’ union.

"It’s something they decided to do on their own," he said. "For me, it was a labor of love. It’s kind of a sin for me to be compensated for doing something that was this much fun."

Eyman said "technically, you don’t have to report it," but he wanted to make sure he didn’t get in hot water with the PDC.

Longtime Eyman critic Christian Sinderman said it’s a gray area of campaign finance law.

"It’s good he brought it forward, but it is consistent with him taking accolades for saying he’s doing it for free and then getting money on the back end," Sinderman said. "It did seem fishy to me that he would do all this without any compensation."