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

[Andreas Schou]

Did I say governor of Wasilla? I meant 'mayor'.

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 6:38 PM, Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>