What the headline says. Honestly, I don't know. Though I'm willing to concede that it might be both.

Everyone's favorite professional initiative sponsor, Tim Eyman, has been making the rounds of the local media recently, pimping his latest for-profit venture, the 520-bridge-sinking/Sound-Transit-derailing I-1125, and I'm trying to figure out whether he really has the cash commitments to run a paid-signature drive, or whether he's just hustling contributions to pay himself back interest and principal on the $238,000 he "loaned" last year's campaign.

According to Eyman's latest C4 filing, by the end of April his Voters Want More Choices committee had raised only $58,000 while spending $21,000 on the year, leaving about $37,000 cash on hand and $188,000 in debt. Year-to-date Eyman had repaid himself nearly $52,000 in principal and interest, but had spent exactly zero dollars on paid signature gathering. By comparison, he'd spent $80,000 through April of 2010 collecting signatures for I-1053, and $560,000 total by the July deadline.

I've heard second hand confirmation of at least one sighting this week of an I-1125 petition, but with barely seven weeks remaining before the deadline that's hardly the makings of a successful signature drive. So unless Eyman's hauled in a half a million dollars in cash and pledges since the end of April, I-1125 doesn't have a snowball's chance of qualifying for the ballot... and Tim knows it.

So which is it? Is Eyman scamming donors for loan-payback money, but with no prospect of running a credible signature drive? Or has he been sitting on a pile of unreported pledges in order to lull his opponents into a false sense of security? Either way it strikes me as a bit of a scam, if not necessarily illegal.

But then, Eyman's whole career has been a bit of a scam, so why should this campaign be any different?

UPDATE: I called Tim and tried to ask him for a response, but he hung up on me.