Tim Eyman, Sound Politics. The greatest tragedy would be Olympia increasing initiative filing fees (House Bill 1668 / Senate Bill 5297) — here’s why House Bill 1668 and Senate Bill 5297 are a monstrosity of anti-initiative policies. Instead of separate anti-initiative bills where each anti-initiative policy can be critiqued and highlighted, this year the Democrats went with the omnibus approach, putting all their anti-initiative eggs into one basket. There is no justification for any change to the initiative process because there is no problem (over 12 years, 12.7 million signatures have been submitted to the Secretary of State, and there’s been 1 problem with 1 SEIU volunteer last year). The large number of signatures is a substantial enough hurdle that only a handful of initiatives qualify each year and voters approve some and reject others (and more times than not, the side which spends the least amount of money wins at the ballot box — voters don’t care which side has more money, they care about which side has the better argument). read more