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Sarah Palin’s Expenses As Governor Scandalously…80% Lower Than Her Predecessor’s!

Don't Know Much Arithmetic. Don't Know Much Geography, Either.

By: Dan McLaughlin (Diary)  |  September 9th, 2008 at 10:57 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The Washington Post, running through their checklist, has an article looking at Sarah Palin’s state-paid living and travel expenses as Governor of Alaska. Our own Ben Domenech wrote up a response to this, which he asked me to post (there go those tech issues again). Ben’s post is as follows:

I do not think this word means what you think it means:

…Palin (a) billed the state for most expenses allowed by law, including per diem when she stayed in her own home (her “duty station” was the state capitol of Juneau) in Wasilla; (b) didn’t bill the state for other expenses, when she could have done so lawfully, such as per diems for her children; and (c) spent a lot less money on expenses than did her predecessor, especially on travel and by ridding herself of the state’s personal chef…

The Post doesn’t do the math for us, but the total per diem claimed was $16,951 divided divided by 312 days, or $54.33 per day (the per diem is $60, so there were some partial days).

Also, the article headline, “Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home,” and some related content, is very misleading. A glance at the expense report reproduced on the Post’s website makes it clear that she requested per diem for her daily expenses, but not for lodging, and that she apparently wrote “lodging–own home” only to explain why she wasn’t requesting hotel expenses. One almost wonders whether the author of the story understands what a “per diem” is; the story notes that Palin rarely charged the state for meals when in Wasilla and Anchorage, but of course she didn’t, because she instead just asked for the per diem!

The whole thing gets even more hilarious when you realize that Palin’s charging less than $60 for trips that would be, if you could drive them, eighteen hours long, between home in Wasilla and work in Juneau. And that is before you consider, as Leon Wolf points out, that you can’t get from Wasilla to Juneau by driving at all – you have to take the ferry.

One wonders what Joe Biden is charging taxpayers for taking Amtrak back and forth almost every day for a two hour trip between Wilmington DE and Washington DC.

Read David Bernstein’s full post, quoted above, for the whole of the hilarity, and John Miller for more.

I know they keep trying to throw stuff at her to see what sticks, but OMG, the Governor of a state asked for a $60 per diem she was legally entitled to, and asked for it less often than she could’ve, and has spent 80% less on personal travel than her predecessor! Scandalous!

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  • Leon_H_Wolf

    Juneau is, SFAIK, completely and totally inaccessible by road. You cannot get in your car from anywhere in the United States or Canada (except for West Juneau, and that doesn’t exactly count) and drive to Juneau, AK. You must take a plane or ferry. Contemplate that Juneau is the capital of Alaska, and also its third-largest city, and you can’t drive there. Now you have an idea of some of the challenges that are unique to Alaska.

  • Achance

    “Sec. 39.20.060. Exclusion of governor and lieutenant governor from personnel laws.

    Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the governor and lieutenant governor are not considered employees of the state for the purpose of state personnel laws relating to hours of employment, annual leave, sick leave, overtime, compensatory time, and travel allowances. This section does not deprive the governor and lieutenant governor of the right to participate in the state retirement system or in state group insurance plans.”

    So, she CAN legally do it. Whether she should have is a political question, not a legal one. It’s an issue that would resonate a bit here because other State employees can’t get travel allowances if they are on State business in a location where they maintain a residence. If they have two or more residences, they have to designate them.

    The part I like is the WaPo using Knowles as some paragon of virtue. Knowles might have been by the book – he usually was- but his appointees weren’t State employees, they were State tourists. And Knowles himself was really, really good at finding some pressing State business in some place where there might be some votes for him. They’d pack up practically the whole Administration and fly them to ANC or FAI for the Alaska Federation of Natives and AFL-CIO conventions and nice Democrat stuff like that. If you were merely a working bureaucrat who had to fly to ANC to do your job, as I was during those times, you could forget getting on any of the non-stops from JNU to ANC if there was anything remotely political going on.

    All that said, I know that I wouldn’t have done it and I’d have told her not to as well, because I would have understood that business as usual for a Democrat is graft and corruption for a Republican. The problem she has is that other than a few of her close associates that she brought in with her, and who know very little about the Executive Branch, she has the Knowles administration working for her. Kim Garnero, the Finance Director quoted in the piece was a Knowles appointee. She’s a nice enough woman but frankly couldn’t say “No” to someone with Commissioner or Governor behind their name if her life depended on it – that’s why they appointed her. Garnero’s boss, the Deputy Commissioner for Administration is a Knowles holdover. The Commissioner of Admin, his boss, had no Executive Branch experience before her appointment – she did have extensive Legislative Branch experience, but that really isn’t worth much in the EB. Likewise, the Administrative Services Director in the Office of the Governor is a longtime holdover and her COS is the ultimate holdover; he retired from the OOTG Administrative Svcs. Director slot and was rehired as a retiree as Deputy COS in Murkowski – he goes all the way back to at least Governor Sheffield, early eighties, as an appointee. Now he both makes considerably more in current salary than the Governor, he’s collecting his full and very substantial retirement. I know he’s good at looking out for his own interest, but I’m not really sure he’s much on looking out for the Governor’s interest.

    As I’ve said here before, she was so concerned with being the Un-Murkowski that she fired almost all the Murkowski appointees and only brought in a few of her close associates. So, now she has a “Republican” administration largely being run by Democrats or D-leaning NPs who stay NPs because it is safer for their careers.

  • Swamp_Yankee

    Need more investigative work and we should be pillorying the media for getting it to us. I want to know more about his Amtrak commute.

    • Achance

      Right now the road out runs about forty miles towards Haines or Skayway and the road system where it runs into a solid wall of Greenies and Capital Movers.

      ‘Course I don’t know any more just how much real people would use a road out. Our Canadian friends really do think all Americans and especially Alaskans are violent louts who’ll either commit a crime or fall on their welfare system. So, if you a a record for almost anything, especially DUI, which a lot of Alaskans have, you have to pay the Canadians a fairly substantial bond to assure your good behaviour in their socialist paradise. So, most of us would just fly to SEA and rent a car or just keep one down there if we go out a lot.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much a road advocate, but it would be better for freight movement than much people movement other than just between Haines-Skagway and the Costco and Home Depot in Juneau.

  • ReyDLT

    We here in Illinois would consider less than $60 per day a gift. After all, our glorious governor Rod “the Mod” Blagojovich spends tens of thousands in air fare between Chicago and Springfield simply because he doesn’t wish to live in the Governor’s Mansion that we taxpayers provide.

  • Flagstaff

    goes unpunished.”

    Had she kept the governor’s jet, there would have been no extra charges for the family. Yet it would have cost a lot more.

    Rush just this minute mentioned this blog on his show.

  • Wintergreen

    What about his dealings with Rezko and Daley?

    Where are Obama’s financial reports?

  • Rod_Patrick
  • VanneGarden

    Dan makes his points nicely about one of the recent Gov. Palin ‘national news stories’, but this is just one tree in a forest of ‘national news stories’ that the mainstream media will be rolling out now, and in the very near future.

    For better or worse, the vetting of Gov. Palin by the 4th estate has just begun.

  • repub78465

    It’s good to fact-check articles about Palin, but our accuracy is important too. The chef was not fired, but reassigned and is still a state employee. So that should not be included in the expenses Palin saved.

    http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/288561.html

    You’ll have to scroll down for the info re: the chef.

    • tir

      Just because the chef was re-assigned, doesn’t mean that Palin didn’t save the money from her salary for the state. Unless she was reassigned as a new chef to someone else who didn’t previously have one (unlikely), she probably took an unfilled position somewhere. Yes, the chef is still getting paid, but in place of someone else. Hence, one salary position is still eliminated.

      • ballred

        and a ticket one way on the Acela (this is an assumption on my part, but I don’t think that Sen. Biden would take the local) is listed at $139 today. That means that Sen. Biden charges the taxpayers a total of $278 per day just to commute back and forth roughly 110 miles each way.

        JMO, butI’d say the Alaskans were getting a pretty good deal here.

        • KyleH

          The chef was reassigned to a different position but it is not clear whether the new position was created just to employ the ex-chef or if there was a vacancy that needed to be filled. Maybe it should be included with an asterisk.

  • wiseprince

    The left is trying to make this into a scandal. I would embrace it and add it to the “original maverick” case. When I went to msnbc to read the article (expecting to be disappointed after seeing the left turn it into a scandal) I was pleasantly surprised. The numbers in comparison to her predecessor are incredible. To me this paints a picture of a woman who tried to do everything in her power to avoid sticking the little guy with the bill. Far from it being a scandal, it is a record to be proud of

    • wiseprince

      but it shouldn’t be played up too much. Let the left play the President V. VP game

      • wiseprince

        The media has not played up any story as something that Gov. Palin did that was good. Everything, from their perspective is a scandal. The “People who know her best” that they have been contacting are her vicious enemies. I find it odd that the media does not see a bias in searching out the 20% of the people in her state that do not think she is doing a good job but the other 80% are unaccounted for. Would that they would goto Illinois and find the probably 50% plus people who think Obama hasn’t done anything for them (and they would be right unless you consider his run for Presidency as, “something for them”). The double standard, the bias is alive and well

        • wiseprince

          She flew coach

          • wiseprince

            This reminds me of the ebay story. They nit pick at the details (Palin has been completely accurate mind you). They complain that she put it on ebay but they didn’t sell it on ebay. The point is she got rid of it. She was given a perk and she didn’t take it. The same is true for the chef. She was given a perk and she said no that’s not necessary. That is the greater point and the media is PURPOSELY missing that point.

            Jesus said it right, These people are hypocrites, they will swallow and camel and choke on a gnat.

            Incidentally, which one of the Senatorial perks did Obama or Biden say no thanks to? Certainly not earmarks.

  • BlackSoul

    The headlines were absolutely breathless. I wish they were still up. Talk about selective reading. The original article at the Washington Post was either poorly written or poorly researched. How do her travel expenses stack up in total compared to her predecessors? I couldn’t tell you from reading that article. What did stand out is that Palin claimed less than she was allowed and operated entirely within the law.

    Where is the scandal here? What a waste of time.

    • wiseprince

      this is sharpshooting. If you were to vet someone you would no doubt find something good about them and report that to the American people. Every story has been negative. To hear the media tell the story she is the most crooked politician of all time. Do you really believe that?

      Why is it every mention of something that she did that was admirable is accompanied with a “yea but”. Has the same standard been applied to superstar Obama? Would that the media would dig through the Rezko scandal the way they dig through Gov. Palin’s trips back and forward from her house to her office.

      This is not vetting, this is sharpshooting

  • CSUFBomb

    …the media ninnies are breathless over their “discovery” that Palin may have taken home a Bic Round Stic and a pocketful of paper clips.

    Well done, WaPo. Now explain how this compares to a closet full of marxists, racists, and felons?

  • Marcus_Traianus

    WPO

    Income Before Tax (EBT)

    12/2007
    481.11
    12/2004
    542.43

    Total Net Income

    12/2007
    288.61
    12/2004
    332.73

    Basic EPS Total

    12/2007
    30.31
    12/2004
    34.69

    Oh, and there is this tidbit;

    ?In the last 8 years, the Post’s circulation dropped from 800,000 to 673,000. Even though its website draws over nine million unique users per month, the paper hasn’t been able to transfer the traffic into revenue. The Post’s profit has declined from $14.9 million last year to $1.2 million.?

    Just thought I would stop by and make that note?.back to work.

    • Orbitermaniac

      The Liberals and MSM (OK, same people) just can’t stand success. You know…all those evil rich folks out there who should be ashamed and redistribute their money to the poor and middle class, the evil oil companies who should be giving their profits to the government for social programs… All you people who don’t give a flip about the planet and drive your family around in a nice SUV instead of giving it up for mass transit… it goes on and on.

      So with Gov. Palin, they see a successful, smart, family oriented mother of 5 who has been successful. OMG…and a christian consertive no less! They just can’t stand it. The Libs must bring her down at all costs. I say, keep trying at your own peril.

      • Elizabeth

        It’s been a while since I lived there, but my recollection was that people were split pretty much 50-50 between America haters and America lovers. I hope it hasn’t gotten that much worse.

        • GregInFla

          It was so cool thinking “I read that already!”

  • localnet

    The media is twisting this one! And the State of Alaska is fortunate to have a governor that cares about the tax payer.

    The per diem that Sarah Palin is getting is roughly that which is allowed truck drivers on a dialy basis. I know, as I am typing this from my sleeper while sitting in Birmingham AL, collecting my per diem!

    The media works so hard at insulting woman & children, and now truck drivers? How much lower can they go?

    Mike

    • Flagstaff

      the day it was posted, just as I was trying to post a comment on it. I tried to give a heads up, but got the infamous “500 error.”

      Since Rush never posts, “he” can read our blogs pretty easily.

      • Flagstaff

        $2 million back on the airplane.

        There is no balance in reporting.