When the finger is pointed at somebody else, she’s all for accountability. When it’s pointing at her, it’s different. Sarah Palin was elected on the basis of providing open and honest government. She has failed miserably. ~Andree McLeod

David Corn has some information on Ms. McLeod’s efforts to get the Palin administration to release withheld emails that the administration has claimed fall under executive privilege.  Some of them emails refer to Andrew Halcro, who opposed Palin in the gubernatorial election in 2006 as an independent.  Halcro himself also has a worthwhile post on Palin’s relationship with the oil industry and her feted natural gas pipeline-that-isn’t:

Since becoming Alaska’s governor in December of 2006, Palin’s administration has had a very combative relationship with the oil & gas industry in Alaska and has ignored any attempts to communicate with them on development issues.

When the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA) was introduced and passed by the legislature in 2007, the administration refused to entertain suggestions from the producers to make the process more commercially viable. At the end of the day the state had crafted a proposal that ignored all legal and fiscal realities. [bold mine-DL]  

So instead of negotiating with the producers, the administration said they’d rely on public and share holder pressure to force three of the largest oil companies in the world to commit to paying for the most expensive privately financed project in the history of the United States.

Even United State Senator Ted Stevens raised serious concerns  about the process back in March saying; “financing terms won’t be set by the legislature, the governor or the Congress. They’re going to be set by the people who manage the money.”

Today, the state has awarded a $500 million inducement and exclusive rights to TransCanada, while their CEO is on record as saying that they cannot order one piece of steel pipe without first gaining the financial support from the oil companies. “Nothing goes ahead unless Exxon is happy with it,” CEO Hal Kvisle told the Toronto Globe and Mail in August.

The pipeline in question is one of Palin’s top items in the speeches she gives in which she lays out how she has fought the oil industry, which obscures that her poor relations with the industry and handling of the project have helped to delay the very project she brags about supporting.  Meanwhile, since she signed a windfall profits tax into law as governor, she makes about as effective a critic of Obama’s proposal to do the same as Mitt Romney would have been on nationalized health care. 

Many of the withheld messages were copied to Todd Palin, which throws the claim of executive privilege into doubt.  Among those copied to Todd Palin were messages pertaining to the Public Safety Employees Association, the union for state law enforcement officers.  The controversy over alleged pressure to fire the ex-brother-in-law, Wooten, had an effect on the administration’s relationship with the PSEA:

John Cyr, executive director of the Public Safety Employees Association, which represents Alaska’s law enforcement officers, said the governor’s grudge against Wooten clouded her judgment and led her to hold down trooper salaries and other funding.

“The trooper budget was held hostage because they wouldn’t fire Mike Wooten,” Cyr said.  

Obviously, we have to take all of this skeptically, but if Cyr’s allegation is correct that could make the firing of Monegan just one part of a pattern of abuse of power relating to this trooper controversy. 

Filed under: politics