Mayor Palin Left Wasilla To The Bears: Cut Funding For Animal Control, Children's Shelter, Rape Kits, More
The fact that Republican candidate for vice president Sarah Palin slashed city funding for forensic rape exams when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, has raised questions about her priorities as an executive. In fact, the controversial rape-kit funding cut was part of larger budget realignment overseen by Palin, where monies aimed at benefiting Wasilla citizens were in effect moved to pay for city legal defense and government employee transportation, including the lease of an SUV for the mayor and expensive improvements to the local airport she used for campaigning. A line-by-line look at the full budget for fiscal year 20001 places the rape-kit cuts in context and provides insight into Sarah Palin's priorities 2 during her 1997-2002 tenure as mayor.
Budgets of course can be arcane. Readers are encouraged to add their own assessments by looking at the budget document, available here as a PDF.
Sample Budget Cuts
A full review of the non-utility "Materials and Services" line items (available here as a Google Document) for fiscal year 2000 reveals 38 budget cuts. Several of these are worth looking at in detail.
- Library Book Purchasing Fund Slashed (Budget pages G-5 and G-7): Governor Palin's original budget for FY2000 requested a $35,876 (19%) cut from the Library Department's budget. To meet this requirement, the revised budget cut funding by 28% for library materials (books, periodicals, audio/visual materials, and supplies for children programs).
- Animal Control Funding Cut (Page F-6): For a city where vicious dogs are commonplace and bears come to feast on unsecured garbage, the fiscal year 2000 budget cut back Wasilla's funding for the Mat-Su Borough Animal Control by 14%.
- Summer Recreation Program Funding Cut Heavily, Partially Restored (Page F-31): Wasilla had traditionally employed 2 to 3 people to run structured summer programming for city children. The initial fiscal year 2000 budget cut funding from $13,966 to $5,000 (a 57% decrease). The revised budget partially restored the cut, providing $8,355 for the summer rec program.
- Contracted Out Early-Intervention Services Eliminated (Pages G-9 to G-10): Wasilla runs a Youth Court, a program of early intervention for troubled teenagers. Some of the services (it is unclear what these services were) provided by the court were contracted out. The FY2000 budget eliminated funding for these services
- Police Department Public Relations Funding Declines (Page F-27): Under Police Chief Irl Stambaugh, this line item paid for neighborhood watch and crime prevention seminars; Mayor Palin felt that providing a sense of "real down-home community belonging" was of utmost importance. Palin replaced Stambaugh and decreased this line item by 90% between FY97 and FY00.
- Rape Kit Funding Transferred to Victim's Insurance ("Contractual Services" page F-28): The rape kit controversy has been covered extensively, most recently in a report by Jessica Yellin on CNN. However, it is still worth noting that the line item paying for rape kits was slashed from $4,200 in FY99 to a mere $1,000 in FY00. Governor Palin recently gave a non-denial denial when confronted about the controversy.
- Grant Decreased to Children's Shelter (Page F-6): The Dorothy Saxton Youth Shelter provides residential care and rehabilitation to endangered children, including victims of sexual abuse. Sarah Palin's fiscal year 2000 budget decreased the Wasilla city grant to the shelter by 25%.
The other 38 line-items that were cut that year were mundane, and are summarized. Twelve involved typical office-related expenses of the sort present in the budget for every Wasilla City Department. These included items such as postage, office and copier supplies. Four of the other line-items were insurance-related. Of the other 22 items, six involved one-time costs, either economic development projects or various forms of maintenance. Two more were grants that merely passed through the City of Wasilla from the State of Alaska en route to a museum and a senior citizen center; these two cuts were due to actions taken at the state level.
Sample Budget Additions
- Defending Against Wrongful Termination Lawsuit (Page F-15): In response to two lawsuits the city was involved in as a result of actions by Mayor Palin, she included $30,000 for legal services in the Mayor's department's budget. The first of the lawsuits filed against the city was filed by former Police Chief Irl Stambaugh. He sued for breach of contract and wrongful termination. The city won this case in March of 2000 when a judge ruled that under Alaska law, police chiefs serve "at the behest of the mayor," an idiom akin to "at the pleasure of the president."
- A Costly Land Grab The city of Wasilla sued developer Gary Lundgren and The Nature Conservancy in 1999 after Lundgren and the national TNC closed a deal for land. Wasilla had made an offer to the state Nature Conservancy that had been mostly accepted with a few kinks still to be worked out. The city won the initial case in July 2000 and began building a multi-use sports facility on the site, but after Lundgren won on appeal, the city was forced to take eminent domain of the land for a higher cost. When combined with court costs, the city had spent $1.5 million, five times the initial cost of the land.
- Money for a Mayormobile (Page F-15): An expense of $3,579 is allocated for the Mayor's Department in the revised fiscal year 2000 budget for "vehicle lease." The lack of a line-item in this or any other budget showing any vehicle purchase by the Mayor's Department suggests this vehicle was the white Chevrolet Suburban SUV "Mayormobile" mentioned in a recent New York Times article on Palin's tenure as mayor.
- Improvements for Rarely-Used Airport (Pages E-1 and E-2): Wasilla residents tend to use Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, and as such, Wasilla's airport gets little use. However, Sarah Palin increased spending for the Wasilla city airport in FY2000 by more than $25,000, from $47,816.26 to $75,135.
Most Alaskan cities and villages require airports, as airplanes are often the only way to get to and from many remote areas of the state. This is why a state of 683,478 people had, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's 2007 data, 51 airports with at least 5,000 passenger boardings. However, Wasilla is not set in one of Alaska's remote locales. It is a mere hour's drive from Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, Alaska's major airport, which hosts flights not only to anywhere in Alaska but also to, among other places, Seattle, Denver, Honolulu, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Portland, Las Vegas, Houston, Phoenix, Taiwan, and Vladivostok on Russia's eastern edge. As such, Wasilla's airport gets almost no use. During her six years as Wasilla's mayor, Palin obtained $1,864,208 in grants from the federal government for improving the airport.To put the airport in perspective, compare it to the Gravina Access Project, seen by many, if somewhat unfairly, as a massive, unnecessary bridge to get people to Ketchikan International Airport. If one considers the Gravina Access Project spending as "airport spending" and includes the now-redirected $223,000,000 earmark that Sarah Palin falsely claimed to have said "thanks, but no thanks" to, then Ketchikan International Airport received $269,581,727 in federal grant money between 2001-2006. However, Ketchikan International Airport has averaged 106,786 passenger boardings per year over the last eight years. Wasilla's airport has averaged only 60 passenger boardings per year over those eight years (479 total), 384 of which were in 2006 when Governor Palin was flying around Alaska on campaign trips. So, even with the "Bridge to Nowhere", Ketchikan International Airport averaged $421 in federal grants per passenger boarding per year. Wasilla's airport averaged more than ten times that, $5,178 in federal grants per passenger boarding per year.
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1 Wasilla's fiscal year 2000 ran from 1 July 1999 to 30 June 2000.
2 Wasilla's Budget Process: The FY2001 budget (available here in PDF form) describes the budget process on pages 3 and 4 (12 and 13 in the PDF). In January, the Mayor and the heads of departments decide on the number of personnel needed for the upcoming fiscal year. In February, the Finance Department calculates labor costs and works with department heads to complete their budget requests, which are then submitted to the mayor. During March and April, the Mayor meets with the Finance Director and the head of each department to review in detail the purpose for each line item, and the objectives and goals it helps to meet. The Mayor then makes any changes he or she feels is necessary, and formally submits the budget to the City Council on April 24th. During the year, any new appropriations or transfers of amounts over $5,000 must be approved by the council; transfers of under $5,000 may be made at the discretion of the mayor
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Wow, and she says she'll be an advocate for special needs kids? Those poor sexually abused kids must not rate very high with her.
Sarah Palin has two faces and neither one is attractive.
Hope she's asked about her shameful record! Pro-life should mean all life not just embryos.
The average education level in Wasilla, Alaska is tenth grade. Need I say more?
Wow! That is a lot higher than I thought based on the former mayor's interviews with Katie Couric.
She cares about only unborn children that aren't hers, I think. When they're born, they're SOL!
At least she pretends to care.
She really doesn't care at all. She wants what she wants when she wants it and screw everyone else.
I heard she was asked about her husband. Isn't he part native american? Yes, she said, but he passes.
He "passes". What a nice thing to say about your hubby.
Why doesn't America know about this lady? She is clearly a borderline personality and has left a trail of bodies, or those who are just glad she's gone, at every step.
For those who don't know, borderline personality is described as follows:
The disorder typically involves unusual levels of instability in mood; "black and white" thinking, or "splitting"; chaotic and unstable interpersonal relationships, self-image, identity, and behavior; as well as a disturbance in the individual's sense of self. These disturbances can have a pervasive negative impact on many or all of the psychosocial facets of life. This includes difficulties maintaining relationships in work, home, and social settings.
Borderlines move around a lot and most people are glad they do. Those, such a John McCain, who are forced to work with them often find out that they are not always too bright.
Most of these details ignore the bigger picture. When Palin entered the mayor's office Wasilla had never enjoyed any federal earmarks nor had it ever had a budget deficit. It also had never had a mayor and a city manager to do the mayor's job. With all these cuts and various other manipulations, Palin took a neutral budget and in six short years even with the addition of a record $27 million in federal funding, she left the city with a $22 million budget deficit. Where did all that money go? She says she reduced property taxes every year, yet she increased the sales tax even for food, and gave property tax reductions to businesses. But all of these figures still don't account for the $49 million in spending that she engaged in. The sports arena, which was built on a bond issue, only accounts for $13 million of that debt and spending spree. Where did the rest of the money go? Nothing I've see so far accounts for that massive spending spree in a town of 5,500.
Hey Prakosh, that is what I have been trying to figure out! I sure hope someone is looking at this and will dig into this further. I think Sarah has a lot of spaining to do!
Also, how about the media consistently reminding the Palin's to give us their tax records. I wonder if there is gold in them there hills?
And we are still waiting for her medical records.
This is why she fits so perfectly with Bush/Mcain way of doing business, she is already an expert of turning a surplus into a deficit in record time
Oh, gee, well ya know we can just go out and shoot us some bear meat to put in da freezer to, ya know, feed our families. Ya. Dats what we do up there in Alaska...
Bears if she can't handle bears and protect her own town from their threat, then how can she ever handle the Russian Bear..?
Well, this more or less proves that she fits right in with big government Republicans in that all her really important things benefited her and her office, while things which enriched the lives of the citizens, especially the youngest and most vulnerable were expendable.
It is the Airport for Nobody to go with her Bridge to Nowhere.
Palin's method of controlling bears is to shoot them from the air, along with wolves, even paying a bounty of $150 for each severed left wolf foreleg. "Right-to-life" woman wants all the caribou and moose meat for herself and her "family". If you care, help get the word out with a hard-hitting television ad from Defenders of Wildlife scheduled to run on debate night. See the tv ad here:
http://www
If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic" or "different
If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. But, name your kids Willow, Trig, and Track, and you're a maverick.
Graduate from Harvard Law School, and you are unstable. But, attend five different small colleges before graduating, and you're well grounded.
If you have been married to the same woman for nineteen years while raising two beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian. But, if you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a stellar Christian.
If your spouse is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of inner city communities, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America. But, if your husband is nicknamed "First Dude," has at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age twenty-five, and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the United States, your family is extremely admirable.
Your statements about Wasilla's airport are a little misleading. The 60 passenger figure refers to revenue passengers.
Wasilla airport is a general aviation airport. It has no commercial flights, except charters. It's a small airport, but there are 110 small planes based there. It's my understanding that the money was for improved nav and safety capability.
A very high percentage of Alaskans are pilots and/or own their own planes, since so many towns are isolated.
See Jacob Alperin-Sheriff's Profile
They have the lake for personal planes. That's what Todd Palin used.
Lake Lucille, where the Palins live, does not have the facility for a lot of planes to be based. The airplanes at that lake are docked at people's homes. I looked at it on google earth, and only saw about 5 planes docked on the lake.
Look at this list of Alaskan airfields and seaplane bases. Every single little town in Alaska has at least one or two places where airplanes can land.
http://en.
Obviously, there's a need and a market for this.
What is that very high percentage? If 110 planes / 9,000 people == 1.2%. Admittedly, that's higher than the national average, but one percent is not usually referred to as a very high percentage.
On the other hand, let's consider $1,864,208 / 110 planes == $16,947 of Federal subsidy (admittedly over six years) per private airplane. Yeah, she's opposed to pork.
Something of a non-sequiter, but that would be about 77 rape kits per year.
And the average educational level in Wasilla is tenth grade. No wonder Lady Sarah seemed smart, even after 5 colleges! wonder what grade Todd got to?
ALASKA has the highest rate of rape in the US.and alcoholism is a major problem.
Balance your budget one the backs of your citizens.
Her car expense would coverall the services in the city.
Ohmigaaaawd, that sounds b-a-d. Bad.
we don't need more Republicans in White House, they CANNOT GOVERN.
And don't want to! They just want to campaign, profiteer, spend middle class America's money!
We cannot afford Republicans any more!
ENOUGH ALREADY.
Sounds a lot like Russia to me.
I Can See Russia from Alaska (When I Look in Your Eyes)...
http://www
According to Google Earth, Russia is over 700 miles from Wasilla with 7000 ft mountains in the way. She must have on hell of a periscope to see Russia.
Bears. Often used as a symbol for Russia. Palin is pro Russian is what you is saying.
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