[Vision2020] And the Hits Just keep On Coming . . .

[Andreas Schou]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 11:44 PM, Jeff Harkins <jeffh at moscow.com> wrote:
> Because you don't know the context of Wasilla and it residents, hence a
> potential for bias on your part.  And no, Palin, as Mayor, could not dictate
> a budget policy - that can only be done by the Council.
>
> Read the statute for municipal government in AK.  By the way, for the most
> part, Idaho municipalities are subject to the same laws.
>
> Both states require public oversight of budget creation and budget
> implementation.

Jeff --

We live in the era of the Internet.

So let's just move past all the secondary sources and take a look at
primary sources, shall we? The City of Wasilla has kindly published
all of its budgets for the years when Sarah Palin was governor, so we
can all see what happened. In the '93-'94 fiscal year, Irl Stambaugh
requested (and received) a $15,000 contingency line item for sexual
assault exams, a $5,000 contingency line item for the '94-'95 fiscal
year, and a $13,000 contingency line item for the '95-'96 fiscal year.
He spent around $10,000 of that money over the three years (if you're
interested, again, you can total it up).

Then Sarah Palin fired him.

The new police chief halved the line item request, to $7,298, and
spent around half of that. The 'victim pays' policy was instituted the
next year, under Sarah Palin's watch, and only $205 of the $3,000
allocated was spent on sexual assault exams--though I'm not quite sure
what that $205 was spent on, as it's not enough to cover the cost of a
whole sexual assault exam. That same year, the law was enacted to
prevent Wasilla--the only municipality in Alaska to have that
policy--from continuing as it had. (Incidentally, that policy
endangered statewide VAWA funding.)

The facts essentially go like this: Sarah Palin fires the old police
chief and hires a hand-selected new police chief. That new police
chief requests a rape-exam line item, and continues to request rape
exam line items throughout his career. However, despite the money
being allocated, the new police chief refuses to spend it. The issue
in Wasilla is sufficiently bad that it alerts the legislature, which
starts to pass a law to prevent Wasilla to continue with its policy;
furthermore, the issue is raised in statewide media. If Palin was not
aware of her handpicked police chief's policy--a policy which was on
her desk as a specific budget line item, the subject of statewide
legislation, and the subject of statewide media coverage--then she is
merely an incompetent executive, rather than a heartless supporter of
'a la carte' law enforcement.

-- ACS

* Anyone who's interested in trolling through budgets to confirm what
I said can find those budgets here:
http://www.cityofwasilla.com/index.aspx?page=136. If only Moscow had
something similar.