She’s a state official. The state is legally obligated to defend her against said complaints. There is absolutely no ethics problem, even remotely, on this.

as they pertain to use of private email accounts for public business? Because that’s exactly what happened. And it runs counter to the ethics rules that the Governor herself put into place.

This has nothing to do with anybody having an axe to grind. Lord knows I don’t, hell I don’t even care. But I am smart enough (minimum double digit IQ) to look at the rules and compare them to facts of what she did in the case in question. She’s got a big problem.

The State of Alaska publishes this thing called the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. It is so comprehensive it even wins awards from whatever organizations give awards for stuff like that. You can read it online even, not that a Palinbot is likely to: http://fin.admin.state.ak.us/dof/financial_reports/cafr_toc.jsp

You can find travel expenses by SFY for each State Public Officer, including me through June 30, 2006, at: http://fin.admin.state.ak.us/dof/financial_reports/ctep_toc.jsp

State Fiscal Years (SFY) run July 1 – June 30. SFY 06 ended June 30, 2006, the last full year of the Murkowski Administration. All you have to do is go read the CAFRs and you will see that Gov. Palin has presided over astounding increases in the State’s operating and capital budgets. She has then used the line item veto to reward friends and punish enemies and bragged about her budget cuts.

Knowles travelled a lot, but he didn’t haul his wife and kids around with him. Murkowski travelled a lot but when he took his wife he paid for it. Before I became an appointee, I travelled more than the Governor lots of years and since I wasn’t an appointee had to prepare and answer for all my travel expense reimbursement requests, so I know those rules like a Baptist minister knows the New Testament, and Gov. Palin is subject to the same rules. The Gov is just a working bureaucrat and the only rules that don’t apply are time and attendence rules. I would not have dared take my wife or kids with me on State travel, even though my wife was a high level State employee with specific expertise that I could have justified for some purposes. Ethics Act complaints come with the territory if you are at all visible. I spent some quality time with the Department of Administration’s Ethics Supervisor in my last year over a trip I took at no cost to the State and paid for by a Board I sat on because it crossed over two pay periods and some clerk didn’t process my leave correctly. I’ve also had some very frank and informative discussions with the Palin Administration’s Ethics Attorney since I left the government over my work for some of my clients; they like to huff and puff but they couldn’t blow my house down. The Administration isn’t at all reticent to threaten Ethics complaints, it just doesn’t like getting them.

In any event, her handling of the Com. Moneghan/Tpr. Wooten thing was just plain stupid and she laid herself open for what followed. Most of her legal bills are from that though if she were confident she was right, she could have asked the State to defend her. She chose to engage expensive outside counsel. The emails are going to come out unless the State’s superior resources simply wear down the complainants. I know that game because I used to play it with some enthusiasm. Somebody would threaten to sue me and I’d simply say, “The State has 500 or so lawyers who’re going to get paid whether they do anything or not this week, you’ve given them something to do.’ The personal email dodge is just that, a dodge. If you’re a State Officer, it doesn’t matter how and where you conduct State business, it is public record. As to the per diem issue, I must assume that somebody has carefully measured and found that it is more than 50 miles from her home to the Attwood Building. I’ve never measured it, but I know that it is 49.7 miles from the nearby Palmer Correctional Center to the Anchorage Jail, a few blocks from the Attwood, so she’s technically entitled to the per diem. It’s simply an in your face to Juneau and a sop to the Capitol movers in her district.

I don’t know why all the Palinbots assume something happened to me. I was two years past retirement age, bored out of my mind, hated the people in the Commissioner’s Office and politicians generally, and didn’t want to go through another election and transition. I knew Murkowski was going to lose and I also knew that it was highly unlikely that either Knowles or Palin would fire me on taking office. Plus, I had return rights to the classified service if I’d really wanted to stay. It was time to go home and call going to the mailbox once a month working.