Palin’s Millllions – Take 2. A Closer Look.
10 07 2009As we all know, one of Sarah Palin’s reasons for stepping down had to do with, as Palin said, ”that huge waste that we have seen with the countless, countless hours that state staff is spending on these frivolous ethics violations and the millions of dollars that Alaskans are spending, that money not going to things that are very important, like troopers and roads and teachers and fish research.”
When pressured to explain exactly where this “million of dollars” came from, Palin’s office released a .pdf file of the breakdown of it’s claim of $1.9 million that should have been going elsewhere. (insert sound effect of someone pedaling backwards really fast)
Most of it is a per-hour accounting of the time state employees, such as state attorneys, have spent working on public records requests, lawsuits, ethics complaints, and issues surrounding the Legislature’s ”Troopergate” investigation last summer of Palin.
”Is it a check that we wrote, no, but is it staff hours, yes,” Sharon Leighow, spokeswoman for Palin, said of the expenses related to state employee work. Those state employees would have been paid regardless.
Ahhh. So it’s not an actual check. It’s “staff hours.”
First of all, just to be clear, unlike The White House, the state of Alaska does indeed have a “Department of Law.” And in order to understand how truly outlandish Palin’s claims are, we’re going to need to take a mental field trip into that very Department of Law, pull back the curtain and take a peek at how that all works. So everyone stick together and follow me.
If something comes up that requires attention it is billed to various departments and state agencies by the Department of Law, depending on what the matter is all about. Attorneys, then, are funded by different departments or agencies. Each attorney in the civil section is responsible for billing his or her time, so that a bill goes to the client agency each month. The funds are essentially transferred between agencies and the Department of Law. One of the clients on the client list is the Governor’s Office. So, if the Governor’s Office has received a larger-than-normal legal bill, the work that the attorneys would otherwise be billing another agency or Department is instead being billed to the Governor’s Office.
The biggest chunk of that, more than $600,000, represents hours state lawyers spent reviewing requested information. They decide how much to release. Records can be withheld for reasons like an individual’s privacy or for “deliberative process” — an executive privilege generally limited to the governor and close advisers, covering internal deliberations before a decision is made.
That’s how the governor’s office explained it to the Anchorage Daily News. It’s all those hours of reviewing information from records requests that really added up.
From what I hear from those in the know, no attorney was pulled off another matter in order to do public records requests. There is one attorney named Dave Jones who is running the request issues, and then whatever attorneys are sifting through the emails respond to those requests. The sifting in the case of ethics complaints was handled on a volunteer basis by attorneys from various sections within the Department of Law, who were otherwise slow. In other words, the attorneys who were doing the public records requests would have been paid the same amount of money to sit around looking for stuff to do, had they not been working on the records requests. The only difference is that instead of the amount being billed to another department, it was billed to the Governor’s Office. So far there have been no indications that any attorney stayed late or worked a weekend because of the public records requests, or where something else wasn’t properly handled because of the public records requests. Presumably, if the sifters had anything more important to be doing, they wouldn’t have volunteered.
And interestingly, page 2 of the .pdf document lists the time and costs for Assistant Attorneys General Bockmon and Jones. Judy Bockmon is the state’s ethics attorney. Handling ethics inquiries is her JOB. So, by working on these ethics issues, she was not doing anything outside of her normal job description, and again, she would have been paid the SAME amount regardless of whether there were 15 complaints filed, or if there were none. Dave Jones represents the Governor’s Office as part (if not all) of his job. Here again, he would be paid the same amount regardless of how many ethics complaints there were, or if there were none. By listing their time on this cost breakdown, the Governor’s Office is implying that they were doing something unusual or special that required all these extra funds that could have been spent elsewhere, which is flatly untrue. They were simply doing their assigned job, much like an attorney in the environmental section would represent the DEC if something happened that caused a flood of litigation against it, and therefore “increased” bills.
So, if the “millions of dollars” is given as a reason, then debunked, then spun by the administration and then debunked again, we are left with the same question we had while we stared slackjawed last week watching the governor announce she was going to quit her job.
Why really?
[Please post off-topic comments on the last open thread. Thanks!]
July 11th, 2009 at 6:23 AM
Oh my word. I’ve finally lost it.
Emailed Maureen Orth (she wrote all the Michael Jackson stuff for Vanity Fair)—the woman has no fear and takes no prisoners. She’s the wife of Tim Russert and mother of Luke.
Anyway, you can write to her and ask her to cover Palin in the interest of good journalism…visit her website and click on contact.
http://www.maureenorth.com
July 11th, 2009 at 6:42 AM
I really don’t think this accounting oversight is newsworthy to msm, and I don’t think it will go anywhere. =(
July 11th, 2009 at 7:13 AM
So now Kritzer has just ruined her career reputation by lying for for Scarah, wow. Little lies become bigger lies until confessions make them go away.
No one needs to cover for Scarah anymore. Please stop. Everyone will understand she made them do it or they’d lose their job. Most people are not in a financial position to stand up to the bullies of this world.
The guilt must not feel very good.
July 11th, 2009 at 7:21 AM
Seems to me if Bockman is head of the ethics dept. she should be ethical and clear this “misunderstanding” up otherwise she’s risking HER career reputation.
Eh?
July 11th, 2009 at 7:25 AM
Questions about the spreadsheet..
Where did it come from?
Did someone from the State actually hand it out?
Next, why would they just present that spreadsheet with all the crazy numbers on it that are bogus?
Did $arah pull it out of her a$$?
Why would state employees lie?
Was the state employee that put that spreadsheet together just incompetent?
Has anyone asked for a new spreadsheet, an accurate one?
July 11th, 2009 at 7:51 AM
I was a government employee for 15 years. Unfortunately, but true, this is how any government agency and/or large corp. define how much any given project/report cost.
They do a cost analysis involving the time that each employees spends on that given project. You do not see the ADN claiming that this method is incorrect because they know it is the way to report how much an report/project cost. I regret that so many of the liberal blogs seem to be claiming that this is not a true and accurate way to arrive at the costs involved in these complaints, however, no matter how you want to spin it, it is the way it is done and has been done for years.
July 11th, 2009 at 7:54 AM
What should be news worthy is the fact she is a pathological liar. They really do exist! ask any psychiatrist. She is ill. It wouldn’t be that hard to prove her lies and not truth. This should be fascinating to someone. But they are afraid of what looking like they are picking on her, she’s set in place a perfect cover.
As to the fuzzy math, think about it, how can someone come up with figures to match Scarah’s b*llsh*t if the figures are not there. I imagine someone just threw up their hands and said “whatever!”, you want a report released to the media, okeedokee. Someone knew this report would stink like sh*t and wouldn’t fly. what do you do when your boss asks you to produce a rabbit from a hat? and you don’t do magic, lol.
Epic fail for Scarah. She is unbelievable. Please someone save the innocents from her.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:18 AM
This accounting fiasco and everything leading up to it, reminds of Nixon.
“I am NOT a crook! ”
I find that there are MANY similarities between Palin and Nixon.
Watch the Frost Nixon movie if you are a youngster and you will be amazed.
The paranoid, self grandiose attributes are just for starters.
Overreacting to minor and perceived slights, with a agenda of vengeance is another.
The idea that because they hold the office they do, means that whatever they do is not illegal.
Self deluded and bitter , because, as Peggy Noonan pointed out:
In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool.
She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them.
She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything.
She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity.
She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it.
She wasn’t thoughtful enough to know she wasn’t thoughtful enough.
Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. “I’m not wired that way,” “I’m not a quitter,” “I’m standing up for our values.” I’m, I’m, I’m.
The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft.
She is a complete elite confection.
She might as well have been a bonbon.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124716984620819351.html
July 11th, 2009 at 8:35 AM
Anybody with a basic understanding of business spreadsheets would spot this as a phony right away. They count on the fact that very few are interested enough to find it and study it.
It all fits with a plan where she does not have to change anybodies mind (as you need to get elected), just keep the “followers” interested enough to fleece for money. A big part of that is continuing the illusion that she is a viable candidate (at least to the followers).
July 11th, 2009 at 8:35 AM
zyggy Says:
July 11th, 2009 at 6:42 AM
I really don’t think this accounting oversight is newsworthy to msm, and I don’t think it will go anywhere. =(
——
zyggy – this is not an ‘accounting oversight’. This is ‘cooking the books’. After lots of murder and mayhem, Al Capone went to jail for this.
redwoodmuse
July 11th, 2009 at 8:49 AM
Arrogance, stupidity or both I guess with Sarah. She is always reacting either to clarify reclarify or refute. She doesn’t hear the word salad everyone else does and is amazed that her statements and spreadsheets aren’t accepted without analysis.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:53 AM
redwood, it doesn’t make any sense for anyone to submit such a piece of crap, none at all, if an accountant submitted that, they would have to be so far up $arah’s ass they couldn’t see anything and just made up crap.
It’s crazy anyone would submit that to the public, and think it would pass review.
something isn’t right.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:59 AM
I found this comment on the Huff Po and thought I would share the chuckle:
Whitley
Wasilla Mathematics
$500 @ hour x 60 lawyers equals…..No, $1000 x 30 lawyers equals….Oh, Fudge, $2000 @ hour x 15 lawyers equals…..divide by…carry two…drop three…..John McCain did not tell me how to figure this. Tooodddddd? What did you say it was? $30,000? You sure? O.K. I’ll just say $30,000 an hour for the shysters, give or take $500.00. Who’ll know the difference? You bet’cha
July 11th, 2009 at 9:05 AM
Congrats, AKM, on your investigative reporting and breaking a piece of the puzzle. Any chance your source will go public with it or to the legislature. Palin lied and it looks like members of her staff lied. Any chance for a legislative executive oversight committee getting involved to find out the actual costs and what’s going on and hold Palin accountable? Oh…probably not. I hope Alaskans will contact their legislators, anyway, to complain about their lack of oversight.
The spreadsheet heading “Department of Law” instead of something like “Cost of Ethics Complaints, DOL” was a tip-off even before looking at the numbers that something probably wasn’t right. From what AKM said about the way the DOL bills it’s services, a schedule could have been prepared through the accounting/operating computer system or at least with computerized schedules to back up each amount so it could be audited.
Sean Cockerham has done a great job so far. I hope he will keep investigating until the true cost of the complaints are known….or, at least, to the point it is crystal clear the cost accumulation was bogus.
#3 overthemoon…..awesome questions. I would also propose asking:
Why are you listing the ethics act as one of your accomplishments when you’re saying it’s ineffective enough to make you quit?
Why don’t you stay on and fix the problems with the ethics act and ethics complaint processing instead of quitting?
July 11th, 2009 at 9:27 AM
I looked at the pdf and the 2nd page seems about right, 41,000.00. Page 1 makes no sense, what is AK Water? Seems to me page 1 is just payroll charges.
July 11th, 2009 at 9:58 AM
Here’s what I don’t understand–this link:
http://fin.admin.state.ak.us/dof/checkbook_online/reports.jsp
takes you to the fiscal spreadsheet for the state’s expenditures for fiscal 2009 or 2010. All state departments are listed in a very detailed breakdown, including expenditure category, sub-category, etc.
This material is freely available and well-formatted–so why didn’t the governor’s office use it, instead of the slapped together piece of crap they released?
July 11th, 2009 at 10:06 AM
Zyggy, I agree. Every Page 1 item should have a backup schedule. It looks like the compiled enough costs to cover P’s arse. I hope someone asks to see the schedules they’ve been using to track costs all along. Surely, Palin has been reviewing monthly operating costs.
Could AK Water be the complaint or lawsuit about the mining ballot initiative? Bottom line: Palin does not want to be questioned.
Are you an accountant?
July 11th, 2009 at 10:07 AM
the – should be ‘they’
July 11th, 2009 at 10:10 AM
HuffPo has a story up about Sarah’s call-in to the gun rights talk show…and once again the 1.9 million dollar lie showed up in the story…so here is my comment:
“Ethics complaints cost about 286,000. Why is this 1.9 million lie repeated over and over? The 1.9 million includes the cost of records requests – many by the media as part of their natural investigation into a political candidate – and does NOT include the money received by the state as payment for those requests!! The 1.9 million also includes salaries for state attorneys who were being paid ANYWAY!
Sarah’s own ethics complaint against herself, plus the valid travel complaint (which resulted in Sarah paying the state back) plus the per diem complaint (which resulted in Sarah having to claim per diem as taxable income) added up to over 2 thirds of this.
In sum, the ethics complaints come to around 100,000. Cry me a river.”
July 11th, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Why did she do it? For the money. And the attention. Damn that Michael Jackson! The nerve of him! And Farrah Fawcett!
http://girldujour.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/she-did-it-for-the-money-really-doh/
July 11th, 2009 at 10:27 AM
no curiouser, I’m not an accountant, but sort of an investigator. For the Alaskan govt to send out that pdf is asinine. Makes Alaskan’s look like knuckleheads.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:34 AM
I took you up on the suggestion to write to Maureen Orth. Here’s what I said:
“You are revered by many, and your name keeps coming up as someone who could do an intelligent search and then report on all the facts/fiction swirling around Sarah Palin.
“My father was Russ Stewart, executive vice president of The Chicago Sun Times and The Chicago Daily News for Field Enterprises back along the way, so I grew up in Chicago and in the newspaper world. I am well acquainted with the ramifications of political machines and cronyism.
“As a journalist myself, I observe that several Alaska bloggers (named below) have integrity and intelligence – and a certain determination that the truth not be obfuscated by Sarah Palin’s charisma and power over her employees.
“How would you go about gathering material, provable facts, to help set the record straight – on website and in a book presumably?
“I am gathering as much information as I can and have it on file. I would invite you, if you have not been there already, to explore what these top-notch writers have to say. The comments are a goldmine. The book is actually already written!
“I am in my seventies and have a bum leg and family obligations, or I would be up there doing the research myself.
“I suggest these sites. The writers are all a very closely knit community of course.
“Thank you for your time. We all admire you so much.”
Then I listed the 6 blogs I read without fail several times a day (talk about addiction!) and also pointed her to Dennis Zaki and the story of the villages last winter on Mudflats.
It’s true, The book is already written. Written by our Beloved Bloggers and their family of comment writers, each of whom, like a dog with a bone,
will…….not…….give…..up.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:38 AM
I think someone commented on an earlier thread that some of the record request costs were related to her running for VP. I remember the news organizations complaining how much they were being charged and a lot of them backed away. If they ever took anyone off a pressing assignment to work on record requests, it was probably during the campaign.
Rob could be close with the $100K. Even if it’s $500K or $2M it’s a drop in the budget bucket and not a valid excuse to quit. There’s something bigger and she thinks there’s a chance she can keep it under wraps like she has everything else. She’s probably known about it since she set up the AFT.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:43 AM
Great letter. Keep us posted Country Girl.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:58 AM
check out the site schlock and flaws posted, and click on any of the pdf files, they don’t look like the one the public has access to, the one AKM posted. That pdf is crooked and sort of looks like an excel file that was tampered with, then photocopied and put into a pdf . Why would anyone do that?
July 11th, 2009 at 12:23 PM
Thank you Country Girl!
July 11th, 2009 at 3:05 PM
schlock and flaws….thanks for the link. Looks like they’re only making public their administrative expenses. It would be nice if they showed the date.
zyggy, ’sort of an investigator’ is intriguing…FBI, IRS?
The online schedule is a check book and one of many reports that can be run from a computerized accounting system. I would hope they would be able to run a report for the ethics related costs that looks like the PDF pg 2. If they have one, they’re sure not sharing it.
PDF page 1 is bogus. Page 2 at least has detail. Both look like typed excel files but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that pg 2 is a special computer-generated report…except the row heights are weird and I’ve never seen a computer-generated report do that.
July 11th, 2009 at 3:21 PM
Does Sarah open herself up to another ethics complaint for lying about how her office uses it money? Or how she used her position to “influence” memberrs of her staff to knowllingly release false and or misleading information about the Governor’s Office’s budget usage?
July 11th, 2009 at 3:37 PM
@Country Girl Says:
July 11th, 2009 at 10:34 AM
Written by our Beloved Bloggers and their family of comment writers, each of whom, like a dog with a bone,
will…….not…….give…..up.
———————————————————————
(((Country Girl)))
July 11th, 2009 at 4:12 PM
curiouser, no nothing at all like that. lol If I was, I wouldn’t haven even mentioned it in the first place. Nothing intriguing at all.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:18 PM
On that “open and transparent” checkbook, linked above by schlock and flaws:
Did anyone notice the dates of purported Fiscal years?
There is a full 2 month period that are actually in both 2008 and 2009 FY labels. These would be July and August 2008.
Accounting gurus: Is it common practice to arbitrarily determine FY’s and to overlap this way?
That spreadsheet she published is garbage. Piper probably did it while simultaneously feeding Trig and cooking dinner for the rest of them while sarah was tweeting and whining.
Where is the back up? How about a time sheet or two? Maybe an invoice? Maybe a report generated by the computer system showing the searches (when they were done, how long it took, etc.).
There was a time when I felt it very necessary to document all the overtime I was putting in. However, being on salary, time sheets weren’t used and I thought that just putting together MY version of time wouldn’t fly in court. What I did was send myself an email at the start and end of each day and the VERY rare lunch time I was away from work. At the end of each week, I just printed the email log of the folder I stored them in. The emails were all date/time stamped, so there couldn’t be a challenge in a court as to the actual hours I was in the office. It was EASY to document my time with just a subject line: Time in/Time out.
I guess in offering up this information, I’m wondering if email date/time stamps might be telling of actual time spent on any given project?
For instance, an email at the beginning of the day saying “I’m just getting started on Arctic Cat research. Will let you know when I find something.” followed by (at the end of the day) “I’ve been at this since my last email. Wow! You really WERE a head-to-toe, neon, flashing billboard for Arctic Cat! We’ll have to make something up. For now, let’s just say you wore a jacket because it was cold out and it happened to have a logo on it.”
Then, we could determine that some yahoo spent X hours discovering SP was wrongfully advertising for Arctic Cat. And those “billable hours” would be accounted for in the spreadsheet.
Of course, getting our hands on the emails would be impossible with the delay/cost tactics they use to keep information secret. It was just a theory I’m throwing out there. Kind of a “what if” they were all SP guaranteed… “open and transparent”?
Where does the $286,000 figure fit into that number salad?
I hope to heck that the new complaints move forward, even with her out of office. I also hope that the ethics board is brought under scrutiny for their mindless decisions.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:22 PM
Bad editing alert:
There is a full 2 month period that are actually in both 2008 and 2009 FY labels. These would be July and August 2008.
Should read:
There is a full 2 month period that IS actually in both 2008 and 2009 FY labels. THIS would be July THROUGH August 2008.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:27 PM
BTW: Do we have detail on the EB’s accounting, also too?
They threw a bunch of numbers out there without backup as well, didn’t they?
There isn’t a reputable accountant roaming God’s green earth that would submit this crap as actual documentation.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:30 PM
Did they say how many “staff hours” were spent gathering this information for Ms. Palin?
Just wondering.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:17 PM
Sometimes I listen to FOX News. (I always have to keep up with the enemy.) One commentator said that what the reason why most “women” hate Palin is that we are suffering from “Palin-derangement syndrome”! Now I have heard it all. How sexist. Just because some women are smart enough to not want an incompetent, devious, egomaniac running our lives, we accused of having some diabolical hatred toward Sarah. The fact is that she is just plain WRONG to be in the kind of position she is in. She needs to go into entertainment where she can entertain people, not have such an important role in people’s lives. I am really thankful to bloggers like AKM who have brought all this our over the past 9 months. Great investigative journalism! You should be working for the networks, but then maybe NOT since they can’t seem to get things straight.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:21 AM
Because narcissists bore easily and it’s not as much fun as it used to be.
Peggy Noonen over at WSJ/Huffington Post deconstructed Sarah Palin.
July 13th, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Welll, if you’re losing weight and your hair is falling out, just jump on a plane and go down to the lower 48 and start making more waves, that’ll prove how astute ( plumb dumb) you are. But, make sure there are NO REPORTERS allowed at your speech…which will likely ensure that a digital recorder will be smuggled in and used appropriately, we should hope.
That spelunking comment sounded the most apt in describing the “no light at the end of the tunnel” kind of mind Scarah has…just fumbling along choosing door after door after door and finding behind them only more debris to rail against. Damn!
If you look at her eyes, they don’t both track in the same direction, which might account for her mental dyslexia where her left brain doesn’t know what her right brain is doing. It cobbles up her speech in the same way, a bit of this and a bit of that, each veering off in a different direction.
She is in such deep doo doo now, a nervous breakdown is about her only face-saving device left…she could have used that excuse to take some months off and as a reason for resigning, instead she lied.
Her days as a national political player are so numbered.
We all know she can stir up hatred and violence, she might just do that to see if she still counts. When she does, we’ll be watching.