Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried a column by John Fund that was even more gung ho than the Palin administration has been in fixing blame. It’s headline? “Why Palin Quit: Death by a Thousand FOIAs.”
This situation developed because Alaska’s transparency laws allow anyone to file Freedom of Information Act requests. While normally useful, in the hands of political opponents FOIA requests can become a means to bog down a target in a bureaucratic quagmire, thanks to the need to comb through records and respond by a strict timetable. Similarly, ethics investigations are easily triggered and can drag on for months even if the initial complaint is flimsy. Since Ms. Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, some 150 FOIA requests have been filed and her office has been targeted for investigation by everyone from the FBI to the Alaska legislature.
That opening sentence is odd, and not only because Fund (and his copy editor) make the rookie mistake of conflating Alaska’s Records Act with the immaterial federal FOIA. It seems like Fund thinks Alaska’s records law is unusually prone to abuse. It’s not. While a handful of states technically require that the requester be a state resident, the vast majority do not. None restricts access to certain classes of residents, because having the records accessible to everyone is kind of the whole point.
Yes, it’s true that since Palin entered the spotlight Alaska has been deluged with records requests—a spokeswoman talking to the Daily News put the number at 189, close to twice what the previous governor encountered in his full four-year term. And while that may be a pain for the line officers and clerical staff who have to fulfill the requests, it’s simply the cost of doing business; Alaska law thankfully requires that most records be made public upon request, presumably because, like every jurisdiction with a records-access law, Alaska’s officials believe that the public is served by having access to information about the decisions and operations of its government.
For Sarah Palin to complain that the state has spent a million or two toward this goal (that’s well short of two one-hundredths of a percent of the state budget) is odd for a politician who campaigned on reform, transparency, and ethics, and who, in her 2006 inauguration speech, implored her constituents with this charge:
“Alaskans, hold me accountable!”
It has been established that Sarah Palin doesn't tell the truth, from her involvment in Troopergate to her reason for quitting her job.
#1 Posted by Aaron, CJR on Thu 9 Jul 2009 at 06:20 PM
Records! Why the heck should Palin keep records! She should just follow Obama's example.
Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Put-nothing-in-writing-Browner-told-auto-execs-on-secret-White-House-CAFE-talks-50260677.html
But keep "speakin' that thruth to power" Clint!
#2 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Thu 9 Jul 2009 at 06:31 PM
I must respectfully disagree. These information disclosure laws. my personal experience is with FOIA, are unfunded, leaving the executive organization the burden of taking money from other, often appropriated, pots to pay for the requests, which are uncoordinated, time sensitive, and legally mandated. When the only money available is appropriated specifically for purpose the executive is faced with the problem of deciding which laws to violate. This is a lose-lose situation. However I may feel personally about former Governor Palin,as a former civil servant who retired partly for this reason, I certainly understand the frustration and unempowerment. It must be much more intense for an elected official and the senior one at that.
#3 Posted by Bruce W. Fowler, Ph.D., CJR on Fri 10 Jul 2009 at 10:41 AM
I think this article makes Governor Palin's point. This is just another silly and frivolous attack piece. Governor Palin said that the state's legal costs, which she stated were for various reasons, were $2 million. You are criticizing her because they were actually only 1,963,840. Are you serious? Furthermore, you take a shot at her for flying her children with her at state expense. By selling the governor's jet at the start of her administration, she has saved the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than offsetting the cost of transporting her family. Your article does not even mention this point.
Have you taken a look at the taxpayer dollars spent flying Michelle Obama and the Obama children around the country and around the world? Have you calculated how much Nancy Pelosi's personal jet airliner is costing the American taxpayers? And how much do we pay to fly the families of congressmen and senators around the world? Your article implies that she had done something wrong, which she has not. Is she supposed to leave her children at home? Would you hold President Obama to that standard?
The more the left goes after Palin with cheap attacks, the more it tells me that they fear hear.
President Obama is destroying capitalism, destroying the notion of private property, bankrupting our future, destroying retirement and savings accounts with programs that can only lead to massive inflation, and has initiated what will go down as the most corrupt, partisan administration in the history of our nation, forever changing our economic system and republican form of government... but you feel your time is best spent pointing out that Sarah Palin rounded off a $1.96 million dollar figure to $2 million. Typical!
Eric Munhall
San Marcos
#4 Posted by Eric Munhall, CJR on Fri 10 Jul 2009 at 11:47 AM
It would be interesting to compare Alaska's expense dealing with information requests after Palin was named to the GOP ticket with that of other states when their governor decides to seek top national office. I suspect that such an event would automatically trigger information requests, from journalists, opponents and even the candidate's own vetters.
Even if the $2 million figure were absolutely accurate, I'd think that such an expense would be considered a modest cost that predictably would accompany a national office candidacy.
#5 Posted by Dennis Mick, CJR on Fri 10 Jul 2009 at 12:50 PM
I don't mind close examination of Palin or any other public figure, but CJR is really obsessed with making Republicans look bad while chastely averting its eyes from Democrats - you know, the gang actually in power right now, Clint. Anyone heard of Charlie Rangel? John Murtha? These guys have much more power right now than Sarah Palin ever had over public policy, but that 'think piece' in CJR deploring the neglect of the smelly atmosphere around these two examples, in favor of obsessing fashionably about the inferiority of Sarah Palin, has not shown up yet. If the issues are really 'hypocrisy' and 'lying', the behavior of the 2004 Democratic VP candidate, far more repulsive both economically and personally than anything the 2008 GOP nominee has been accused of, while not condoned, has also not been hashed over to nearly the same degree as a metaphor for a certain kind of politician who lives a wealthy 'right-wing' lifestyle, big carbon footprint and all, while intoning left-wing rhetoric.
Nobody has gotten around to considering that the things Palin is supposedly 'bad' at were things Edwards was 'good' at - and maybe reconsidering whether the political-media echo chamber is asking the right questions and framing perceptions in a loaded manner.
#6 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 10 Jul 2009 at 01:23 PM
The cost of public records requests can be easily recouped by charging a fee. I agree with the previous poster that it could be viewed as the natural cost to Alaska of having their Governor on a national ticket.
In addition, it's not truly even a cost to Alaska citizens. A competent administration would simply hire contract workers for fulfilling public records request, pass along their costs to the requester, and the work of governance would proceed as customary. By the way, it's been reported that fees were charged, so where are those incoming dollars reported to the self-serving Palin spreadsheet?
One could even take the view that news agencies from the lower 48, via public records requests, have created paid employment for a few Alaskans!
Palin's whining is tiresome and further proof that she is an incompetent administrator.
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