Yesterday, the Vancouver Columbian ran an op-ed penned by Sightline executive director Alan Durning and speech writer/community volunteer Todd Campbell. Here’s a taste:

[W]hile times are tough, I-1053 is just the latest ill-considered and undemocratic initiative from Eyman that promotes corporate special interests at the expense of essential citizen services like schools, roads, medical care and clean water.

If I-1053 really were a grass-roots movement to protect citizen’s pocketbooks, you would have seen an army of volunteers working to put the initiative on the ballot and a flood of small individual contributions to ensure that it succeeds in November. Instead, Eyman’s organization paid $299,500 to an outfit called Citizen Solutions (which offers “petition management serving all of your initiative and referendum needs”) to field squadrons of paid signature gatherers.

…All told, 75 percent of the nearly $800,000 collected by Eyman’s campaign comes from deep-pocketed corporations, mostly with out-of-state addresses.

You can read the whole op-ed here, and find out more about how “public” initiative 1053 is really a vehicle for special interests.