Eyman still seeks salary donations

OLYMPIA – Tax rebel Tim Eyman is again urging backers to contribute to a salary fund, telling supporters Monday that it is “absolutely crucial” to keeping the movement alive.

Eyman’s salary fund, called Help Us Help Taxpayers, is to be shared with his two co-chairmen, Jack and Mike Fagan of Spokane.

Eyman, best known for the $30 car-tab initiative and ballot measures dealing with property-tax limits and affirmative action, recently qualified Initiative 900 for the November ballot. The measure would authorize and finance performance audits of state and local government agencies and programs by the state auditor.

“The good news is we don’t need you to donate to the I-900 campaign because the initiative is going to pass overwhelmingly – there’s no organized opposition and the polling shows we have huge support that’s only increasing as election day approaches,” he told backers in an e-mail Monday.

The initiative committee, called Voters Want More Choices, raised nearly $618,000, including nearly $490,000 from a single donor, investment banker Michael Dunmire of Woodinville. The committee spent about $569,000 qualifying for the ballot.

Eyman said organizers were unsalaried while the signature-gathering was under way. Using the same technique he now has used for three years in a row, the Mukilteo resident is urging backers to contribute to a salary fund he and the Fagans will divide at year’s end.

According to Public Disclosure Commission records, the fund has been receiving contributions since April and now totals about $127,000.

Critics call Eyman a political panhandler, and note he once got in trouble for shifting over $200,000 in campaign donations into a salary fund without properly reporting it – after characterizing himself as an unpaid citizen activist.

He was fined $50,000 and ordered never to handle a campaign treasury. Eyman later paid his legal bills and the fines by collecting a defense fund of about $120,000.