The Mudflats

It’s always the quiet ones…

Behold the Shadow Governor.  It looks like Todd Palin really did live up to his nickname.

A huge quantity of emails from the State of Alaska have been released – not for the $15 Million originally quoted to MSNBC who made the records request almost a year and a half ago, but for $323.58.  Yes, that’s three hundred twenty three dollars and fifty eight cents.  Quite a bargain considering the original price.

State law says that public records requests should be addressed within 10 days.  10 days… a year and a half… whatever.

This info dump is chock full of interesting information:

Nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials, which were released to msnbc.com and NBC News by the state of Alaska under its public records law, draw a picture of a Palin administration where the governor’s husband got involved in a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received background checks on a corporate CEO, added his approval or disapproval to state board appointments and passed financial information marked “confidential” from his oil company employer to a state attorney.While 1,200 separate e-mails were released this week, 243 others were withheld by the state under a claim that executive privilege extends to Todd Palin as an unpaid adviser to the government. Still, just the subject lines of those e-mails provide a glimpse of the ways the Palins divvied up their responsibilities when she became governor in December 2006, less than two years before Republican Sen. John McCain pulled her onto the national political stage by nominating her as his vice presidential candidate.

The still-secret e-mails between Todd Palin and senior officials reach into countless areas of state government and politics: potential board appointees, constituent complaints, use of the state jet, oil and gas production,  marine regulation, gas pipeline bids, postsecondary education, wildfires, native Alaskan issues, the state effort to save the Matanuska Maid dairy, budget planning, potential budget vetoes, oil shale leasing, “strategy for responding to media allegations,” staffing at the mansion, pier diem payments to the governor for travel, “strategy for responding to questions about pregnancy,” potential cuts to the governor’s staff, “confidentiality issues,” Bureau of Land Management land transfers and trespass issues and requests to the U.S. transportation secretary.

Also withheld: a discussion of how to reply to “media questions about Todd Palin’s work and potential conflict of interests.”

And that’s only the stuff that was withheld. The released emails including coaching to staff about how to disguise additional electrical work needed to wire her new tanning bed in the governor’s mansion in Juneau, searching for a public event to cover travel costs for her daughter Willow, taking a major Alaska newspaper off the list to receive press releases out of retribution for an unfavorable story, and more. Much more.

This marks the end of a very ugly week for the Palins, and raises questions about the role of the former First Dude in governing the state.  Reports of Todd Palin camped out in the corner during official meetings, and his contact with the Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety during the Troopergate scandal had fueled speculation on the degree to which he stepped over the line from private citizen, to political adviser, to Shadow Governor.  The release of these emails answers that question to a degree, and raises the possibility that Alaska had it’s very own secessionist version of Dick Cheney in the halls of power.

Another question raised recently addresses the use of Yahoo! email accounts to conduct official state business.  The Palin administration frequently used such accounts, and a recent ruling in Alaska Superior Court upheld the legality of such practice.

Alaska Republican Andrée McLeod has filed a lawsuit against the state on this issue. In it, she argues that if one private citizen in the state of Alaska can be privy to all these e-mails about the workings of state government, then the state has waived the privilege.

“If one citizen can see them, Todd Palin, then why can’t every citizen see them?” McLeod said.

Palin’s chief of staff, Michael Nizich, rejected that argument in a denial letter to McLeod’s attorney. Nizich said that Todd Palin was not a third-party outsider, but an insider, “an invited advisor and participant in the actual decision-making protected by the privilege.” It doesn’t matter, the state argues, that Todd Palin’s advice wasn’t paid for; it was still solicited.

“Mr. Palin is a proper advisor to the governor,” Nizich wrote. “There is nothing inappropriate about the spouse of a chief executive playing such a role. The governor is absolutely entitled to involve him in policy matters as an advisor as she sees fit.”

McLeod v. Parnell (Palin), seeks to establish that emails sent or received by a state employee  on a private email account when the content includes official state business is a “public record” as defined by the Alaska Public Records Act, and that using private email accounts to transact office state business violates Alaska Statute 40.25.140, which prohibits a state employee from “obstructing” public inspection of “public records.”

The spin on this case has been to frame the issue as being a personal one between McLeod and Palin.  Watchdog v. Governor, “Falafel Lady” v. Joan of Arc, Evil v. Good.  But in reality, recent rulings on this case should be sounding alarm bells and waving red flags for those who value an open and transparent state government.

McLeod’s attorney Donald Craig Mitchell notes:

The cursory reporting implied that Judge McKay did so because he found that emails sent/received on private email accounts are not “public records.” In fact, while the analytical precision Judge McKay brought to his judging was wanting in several significant respects, what he said, albeit implicitly, was that such emails could be “public records” but only at such time, if at all, that the agency who employs the state employee who sent/received the emails decides to “preserve” the emails. He also implied that a state agency has total discretion to decide to “preserve” or not “preserve,” even if the decision to not “preserve” is made with bad motive (i.e., to prevent the public and the Alaska press from discovering that the emails even exist).

The undefined (by the Alaska Legislature) word “preserved” that Judge McKay defined on his own appears in the generic A.S. 40.25.220(3) definition of the term “public records” in the Alaska Public Records Act.

In other words, Judge McKay’s holding applies to all records that the executive branch of the government of the State of Alaska generates. Not just to emails or to emails sent/received on private email accounts.