TruthNews Commentary, October 13, 2008

An Alaska state legislative panel has released a report that concludes that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power but did not break the law by pressuring officials to fire a state trooper who was once married to her sister. We’re not sure what the difference is. If she didn’t break the law, how did she abuse her power?

The investigation centered on the dismissal of Alaska's Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who said he might have been fired for refusing to remove state trooper Mike Wooten. Wooten was previously married to Palin’s sister. Monegan was a political appointee appointed by Palin.

Palin and her sister, Molly McCann, reported that state trooper Mike Wooten had made death threats against their father, Chuck Heath, during a divorce proceeding that occurred in 2005 prior to Palin's becoming governor.

An Alaskan state police probe, conducted before Palin was elected governor, found that Wooten violated internal policy, but not the law, in making the death threat against Heath. Wooten denied having made the threat, but the investigation decided that he had in fact done so. The investigation concluded that the death threat was not a crime because Wooten did not threaten the father directly; therefore, the investigator deemed the threat to be a violation of trooper policy rather than a violation of criminal law.

Wooten was also accused of using a taser on McCann's 11-year son (Wooten's step son), as well as illegally killing a moose, driving with an open beer in his police vehicle,

Julia Grimes, chief of the Alaska state police, announced on March 1, 2006 that she would suspend Wooten for ten days due the taser, moose, and beer incidents, and also to seven other negative actions in Wooten's personnel file, such as failing to use turn signals. She concluded that "[t]he record clearly indicates a serious and concentrated pattern of unacceptable and at times, illegal activity occurring over a lengthy period, which establishes a course of conduct totally at odds with the ethics of our profession." After a union protest, the suspension was reduced to five days,

In any other state, a state trooper who repeatedly broke the law, abused his power, and made death threats would have been fired and would quite possibly be doing hard time in the state prison. Apparently, pressure from the Alaskan state troopers’ union kept Wooten on the job.

Palin was elected governor in 2006 on a clean government platform after having taken on an entrenched and corrupt Republican establishment. Then-Governor Frank Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2003. She chaired the Commission beginning in 2003, serving as Ethics Supervisor. Palin resigned in January 2004, protesting what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members. After resigning, Palin filed a formal complaint against Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner Randy Ruedrich, also the chairman of the state Republican Party, accusing him of doing work for the party on public time and of working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. She also joined with Democratic legislator Eric Croft to file a complaint against Gregg Renkes, a former Alaska Attorney General, accusing him of having a financial conflict of interest in negotiating a coal exporting trade agreement, while Renkes was the subject of investigation and after records suggesting a possible conflict of interest had been released to the public. Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine. In 2006, Palin defeated Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary and then went on win the general election.

In early December 2006, Palin took office as Governor of Alaska and appointed Walter C. Monegan III to be Public Safety Commissioner, a cabinet position. Monegan is a former police chief of Anchorage, Alaska. Shortly after Monegan took office, Todd Palin, Sarah Palin's husband, asked Monegan to look into the Wooten affair. Monegan agreed to do that. After Monegan's staff looked into the matter, Monegan told Todd Palin that there was nothing he could do because Alaska state troopers operate under a union contract that restricts the circumstances under which a trooper can be fired.

It’s not surprising that a reformer would try to clean up the state police. Wooten was clearly an embarrassment to the state troopers.

On July 11, 2008, Palin's acting chief of staff Mike Nizich dismissed Monegan. Palin explained that Monegan wasn't doing enough to fill state trooper vacancies and battle rural alcohol abuse issues. She said he "did not turn out to be a team player on budgeting issues."

Palin said that Monegan had indicated to legislators she wasn't proposing enough spending. Palin's acting chief of staff, Mike Nizich, said Monegan asked legislators for spending that hadn't been authorized by the governor. "The response he got was don't come to us and ask for more money when you cannot fill the 56 or 58 trooper positions that were vacant," Nizich said in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News. "So he was making a pitch for additional funding when he couldn't even fill what he currently had available to him."

On August 28, in an interview with Anchorage Daily News, Monegan said, "For the record, no one ever said fire Wooten. Not the governor. Not Todd. Not any of the other staff. What they said directly was more along the lines of 'This isn't a person that we would want to be representing our state troopers.'"

As a political appointee, the Alaskan Public Safety Commissioner serves at the governor’s pleasure. The Governor can fire the Public Safety Commissioner at any time without cause.

The report released by the legislative committee concluded that

Governor Sarah Palin abused her power as Governor in that her conduct violated AS 39.52.110(a) of the Ethics Act, which provides "The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

Although Walt Monegan's refusal to fire Trooper Michael Wooten was not the sole reason he was fired by Governor Sarah Palin, it was likely a contributing factor to his termination as Commissioner of Public Safety. In spite of that, Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.

The two conclusions are contradictory. If "Governor Palin's firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads," how did she abuse her power as governor?

A spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, Meghan Stapleton, said the report showed Palin acted legally in her decision to dismiss Monegan. The campaign also characterized the inquiry as a partisan attack on the vice presidential candidate. Governor Palin says Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute.

The findings come amid a heated race for the presidency between Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain.

The nearly 300-page report does not recommend sanctions or a criminal investigation.

Commenting on CNN's "Larry King Live" show Friday, Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of the conservative National Review On-Line, dismissed the inquiry as politically motivated.

"It sounds to me that this was a political enterprise that came up with a compromise where they basically said, 'She broke no laws but they don't want to seem like a whitewash, because we have Obama supporters on the investigating parties.' So what we're going to do is say she did something wrong, even though she broke no law," said Goldberg.