Never poke a sleeping bear, or tiger, or Tim Eyman, the fourth branch of government. On the day his Initiative 776 was rolling up a comfortable lead at the polls, mandating $30 car tabs, he was filing another one for next year, to be I-800, requiring a 75 percent super majority for any tax or fee increases by the legislature.

Then he learned that some of the counties affected by I-776, (the four that added $15 to the $30 car tab on their own are King, Pierce, Snohomish and Douglas), did not plan to take that surcharge off when I-776 takes effect Dec. 5. King County and Sound Transit said the extra money had been pledged to pay off bonds and the Attorney General’s office said that pledge cannot be retracted.

The other three didn’t have their extra money tied up in bonds, but Pierce at first said it wasn’t inclined to go along with an AG’s opinion and might keep on collecting the extra $15 anyway. After all, Eyman had said he wouldn’t take anybody to court over it. Too expensive.

So what did Eyman do?

Well, he took his new initiative off the table and added a few lines to it. Instead of just requiring the state to get a 75 percent majority to raise taxes and fees, he threw in counties, cities and towns. He allowed a simple majority approval only if referred to the people for their OK.

“This is wildly popular, even more than I-695 (the original $30 car tab measure),” he said. I’m buried in e-mails and faxes from people champing at the bit to get signatures for it beginning in January. No matter what the circumstances, everyone wants it to be tough to raise taxes.”

Not everyone, I said. Certainly not any public official, and certainly not newspaper editors, who are notoriously supportive of tax increases and will come out en masse against this.

“Oh, they’re minuscule in number compared to the regular voters,” he said. “Ask the voters if they think it should be tougher to raise taxes in the state of Washington. Circumstances are not normal. Here we have I-776 where voters said for the second time we want $30 tabs, no ifs, ands or buts. On Dec. 5, $30 tabs become law, but we have governments in the Puget Sound region intending with impunity to say, ‘You know what? We’re gonna break that law. What are you going to do about it?’ It’s an extraordinary taunting of the voters to say, ‘You voted twice for this but we are not going to do it. Our lust for tax dollars outweighs our respect for the law to be enforced.’”

“All the local government officials are scratching their heads and asking why are you punishing us?” said Eyman. “If the governments had simply abided by this, it would have been just the state, but because their colleagues in King, Snohomish, Pierce and Douglas counties decided their lust for dollars outweighs the law, the best way to send the message is to add the rest.” It’s not going to take a penny of government revenue away, he said, “it simply requires a huge consensus, meaning you’ve exhausted every other option except for a tax increase.”

How do you get a 75 percent majority from three county commissioners? I asked.

They would all have to vote for it, he said. “You know, the Supreme Court refused to consider I-601 which required a two-thirds majority for state tax increases because they said no harm could be proved by that. Then the legislature suspended the two-thirds majority for 2002 and 2003, so how can anyone say 75 percent would be harmful if two-thirds isn’t?”

Don’t bet that the 2003 Legislature won’t extend that suspension, I said.

“It’s still only a suspension,” Eyman said. “And because it’s temporary, they were clearly willing to abide by (the two-thirds requirement) again. The point I am making is that they are in a dramatically worse position to argue harm from a 75 percent majority because there is no proof that for a decade a super majority caused any harm,” Eyman said.

He calls I-800 his 800-pound gorilla. Washington seems to be a breeding ground for 800-pound gorillas.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA., 98340.).