The state Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Initiative 747 has created a big opening for leadership. The question is, who will seize it – state lawmakers or Tim Eyman?

Eyman’s fortunes – in decline for years – were suddenly revived this week by the passage of his Initiative 960 and Thursday’s court ruling.

The ruling is a legal and political disaster. It lends credence to every accusation that the state’s elites view common citizens as bumpkins who don’t know a ballot from a box lunch. It plays right into the hands of Eyman, who’s been saying as much for the last eight years.

That’s the politics. The legalities are equally troublesome. The court ruled – 5-4, on hypertechnical grounds – that the electorate might have been misled into approving I-747, which holds increases in property tax collections to 1 percent a year.

Washingtonians might have not have known, the justices concluded, that the previous cap on increases was actually 6 percent, not the 2 percent dictated by I-722, a 2000 Eyman initiative that was overturned shortly before I-747 itself passed.

The four dissenting justices in effect responded, “Are you kidding? The voters knew darn well they were cutting the cap to 1 percent.”

As Charles Johnson put it, “The majority seems to suggest that the voters are unable to think or read for themselves, when in fact our democratic process is based on the assumption that voters do in fact read and understand the impact of their votes.”

Question: Would taxpayers have been less likely to approve I-747 if they knew it was lowering the cap from 6 percent, not 2 percent? Nonsense.

Then there’s the question of just who made this ruling. The five-vote majority included two “pro-tem” justices – judges borrowed from a lower appeals court after two real justices recused themselves from the case.

So the “majority” included only three justices actually elected to decide cases in the court of last resort. The “minority” consisted of four.

Eyman or anyone else could take this insulting decision, whip up support for a clone of I-747, and run all the way past the goal line with it come next year’s election. That would be a shame, because the initiative’s 1 percent cap has undermined local governments’ ability to provide such basics as fire and police protection.

This brings up the question of leadership.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Thursday she would ask the Legislature “to thoughtfully reinstate a property tax cap.”

Thoughtfully should be the operative word here. I-747 wasn’t thoughtful; it was a spiteful attack on all local governments because a handful of them had challenged I-722’s 2 percent limit in court.

I-747 ought to be replaced by a property tax cap – one that holds annual increases in collections to the rate of inflation, not that arbitrary, draconian 1 percent.

With an inflation-based cap on the books, anyone who attempts to clone the 1 percent lid would be forced to explain why local budgets that pay for emergency services, etc., shouldn’t be allowed to keep pace with the actual cost of providing those services.

A failure to provide a smart alternative to I-747 would create a leadership vacuum. Eyman and his merry pranksters know just how to step into one of those.