Eyman sets out his new tax targets

By David Ammons

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — Tim Eyman, fresh from landslide approval of his property tax initiative, already has his targets for 2002: mandatory public votes on new highway taxes, repeal of some mass-transit taxes in the Puget Sound region, and rollback of some vehicle and boat taxes.

On Tuesday, Eyman will file his fourth anti-tax initiative in as many years.

Although its consequences could be sweeping — there’s potential for halting the multibillion-dollar light rail project in the Seattle area, for example — Eyman says his main point is simple: Politicians should keep their promises.

"We were promised $30 car tabs, and yet it’s creeping right back up again, to well over $100 a year in some places," the Mukilteo watch salesman said in an interview. "And we were promised a public vote on any new transportation taxes. Those were explicit promises.

"Our initiative this time simply asks elected officials to follow through on the promises they’ve made, so that they are not just ‘Olympia promises’ where they say it but don’t really mean it."

State budget director Marty Brown said the administration is still studying the plan. His initial reaction: "Voters have to realize that nothing is free."

Some highlights of the new effort from Eyman’s Permanent Offense organization:

Eyman’s calls it the Right to Vote on Higher Vehicle Taxes Initiative. The measure wouldn’t expressly require a public vote, but Eyman says if lawmakers try to pass a transportation plan in Olympia this winter, he’ll mount a referendum drive to force a public vote.

Earlier this year, Gov. Gary Locke and others pledged to place a multibillion-dollar package of transportation taxes, including a 9-cent increase in the gasoline tax, on the ballot. Midway through the session, Locke changed his mind and urged lawmakers to pass it themselves

The referendum debate was never resolved, and the $9 billion package did not come to a vote in either house, which means it will be on the agenda for the 2002 Legislature. Locke, Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder, D-Long Beach, and others say the state’s traffic congestion has gotten so bad that financing should be approved in Olympia this winter without the delay required for a public vote — or the attendant possibility of defeat.

Eyman says Locke and lawmakers promised that "$30 license tabs are here to stay" when they approved the dramatically lower excise tax last year. Voters approved Eyman’s $30 tab initiative, I-695, in 1999, but the courts threw it out. Within a few days, the Legislature pushed through the tax break.

But Eyman says no one actually pays only $30. Among the add-ons he would repeal: a $3 filing fee; a $3.50 subagent fee; a 50-cent license service fee; a $15 local option transportation fee levied in Douglas, King, Snohomish and Pierce counties; and an excise tax for Sound Transit in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties.

Licensing a 2000 Chevrolet Impala in King County costs $108.50 a year. In Yakima County, the cost is $33.50.

The Department of Licensing says the $3 filing fee, primarily used to reimburse counties, raises about $15 million a year. About 4.4 million vehicles and 280,000 boats are registered each year.

Eyman would repeal the motor-vehicle excise tax levied in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. The tax — 0.3 percent of the vehicle’s value — costs $60 a year for the owner of a $20,000 vehicle. The levy brings in about $57 million a year. The other main revenue source, a sales tax of 0.4 percent, brings in about $200 million a year and would not be affected.

Eyman says his goal is to pull funding for Sound Transit’s much-criticized light-rail program. He called it "a train to nowhere" and "a black hole for tax dollars." If Sound Transit wanted to restore any of the lost revenue, it could develop a new proposal and take it to the voters, he says.

Dave Earling, president of Sound Transit’s board, says Eyman is unwise to attack a mass-transit program that voters in the three counties approved in 1996. A commuter rail program between Tacoma and Seattle is "a smashing success" and express bus service has moved over 10 million passengers in the past two years, he said. The first stem of the light-rail system is ready for a green light, he said.

"How does it help our transportation problems to bring Sound Transit to its knees?" Earling says.

Eyman contends the light-rail program has been thoroughly discredited.

"Voters are cynical about giving government more money when billions are being flushed down the toilet at Sound Transit," he says.

The initiative would clarify that the full excise tax on vehicles has been repealed. The state Supreme Court is considering transit districts’ contention that the Legislature inadvertently left about a third of the tax still on the books. That tax isn’t being levied now, but could cost a motorist over $100 a year if it is imposed after a high court ruling, Eyman says.

Eyman would repeal the tax on boats, 1 percent of the vessel’s value, and replace it with a flat tax of $10.50 a year. Boaters pay sales taxes when they buy their vessels and shouldn’t have to pay more every year, he says. The owner of a 1998 20-foot boat licensed in Thurston County pays an excise tax of $96, for a total licensing bill of $110 a year.

The initiative would set license-tab fees for travel trailers and campers at $15 a year.

The plan would freeze gross-weight fees at current rates. Lawmakers have proposed a 50 percent increase as part of the overall transportation finance package. Eyman says under his measure, increases could still occur, but not without a public vote.