Investigation reveals Palin got zoning aid, gifts
Published Sunday, September 28, 2008
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Sarah Palin
Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was his choice as vice presidential running mate on Friday, Aug. 29, 2008.
WASILLA, Alaska — Though Sarah Palin depicts herself as a pit bull fighting good-old-boy politics, in her years as mayor she and her friends received special benefits more typical of small-town politics as usual, an Associated Press investigation shows.
When Palin needed to sell her house during her last year as Wasilla mayor, she got the city to sign off on a special zoning exception — and did so without keeping a promise to remove a potential fire hazard.
She gladly accepted gifts from merchants: A free “awesome facial” she raved about in a thank-you note to a spa. The “absolutely gorgeous flowers” she received from a welding supply store. Even fresh salmon to take home.
She also stepped in to help friends or neighbors with City Hall dealings. She asked the City Council to add a friend to the list of speakers at a 2002 meeting — and then the friend got up and asked them to give his radio station advertising business.
That year, records show, she tried to help a neighbor and political contributor fighting City Hall over his small lakeside development. Palin wanted the city to refund some of the man’s fees, but the city attorney told the mayor she didn’t have the authority.
Palin claims she has more executive experience than her opponent and the two presidential candidates, but most of those years were spent running a city with a population of less than 7,000.
Some of her first actions after being elected mayor in 1996 raised possible ethical red flags: She cast the tie-breaking vote to propose a tax exemption on aircraft when her father-in-law owned one, and backed the city’s repeal of all taxes a year later on planes, snowmachines and other personal property. She also asked the council to consider looser rules for snowmachine races. Palin and her husband, Todd, a champion racer, co-owned a snowmachine store at the time.
Palin often told the City Council of her personal involvement in such issues, but that didn’t stop her from pressing them, according to minutes of council meetings.
She sometimes followed a cautious path in the face of real or potential conflicts — for example, stepping away from the table in 1997 when the council considered a grant for the Iron Dog snowmachine race in which her husband competes.
But mostly, like other Wasilla elected officials at the time, she took an active role on issues that directly affected and sometimes benefited her. Her efforts to clear the way for the $327,000 sale of the Palin family home on Lake Wasilla is an example.
Two months before Palin’s tenure as mayor ended in 2002, she asked city planning officials to forgive zoning violations so she could sell her house. Palin had a buyer, but he wouldn’t close the deal unless she persuaded the city to waive the violations with a code variance.
The Palins, who were finishing work on a new waterfront house on Lake Lucille about two miles away, asked the city for the variance. The request was opposed by one planning official and some neighbors.
“I would ask that the Wasilla Planning Commission apply the exact same rules in this situation that it would apply to other similar requests so that our community can see that being a public figure does not give anyone special benefits,” urged neighbor Clyde Boyer Jr. in a 2002 note to the city.
The Palins’ house was built by the original owner too close to the shoreline and too close to adjacent properties on each side, including a carport that stretched so far over it nearly connected the two houses.
The Palins didn’t create the zoning problems, but they should have known about them when they bought the house, wrote Susan Lee, a code compliance officer with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, in response to the Palins’ request. The borough, similar to a county government, makes recommendations to the city, which has final say.
Lee, in recommending the city reject the request, noted that the exception was needed to resolve an “inconvenience” the Palins experienced while trying to sell their house. In 1989, another borough planner told a previous owner that a variance for the carport couldn’t be approved because it didn’t meet required conditions and was a potential fire hazard.
But in August 2002, Wasilla Planner Tim Krug approved a “shoreline setback exception” for the Palins’ house being built too closely to the water. He sent an e-mail to the mayor saying he was drafting another variance for the side of the house built too close to the property line, but that he understood from her that the other side “will be corrected and the carport will be removed.”
Krug asked Palin to let him know if he was wrong in his impression that the carport would be removed.
A few minutes later, the mayor e-mailed back: “Sounds good.”
On Sept. 10, 2002, the seven-member Wasilla Planning Commission unanimously approved a variance for both sides of the property, with language covering “all existing structures.” Less than a week later, the Palins signed a deed to sell the house to Henry Nosek.
The carport was never removed.
Nosek said Sarah Palin didn’t do anything more than any other citizen would have done.
“I sincerely don’t feel that Sarah used her position as mayor at the time to get that accomplished,” said Nosek, who no longer lives in the home.
James Svara, professor of public affairs at Arizona State University and author of “The Ethics Primer for Public Administrators in Government and Nonprofit Organizations,” suggested such behavior is part of small-town politics.
“Small towns are first-person politics, and if people are close, it’s hard to separate one’s own personal interest and one’s own personal property from the work of the city,” Svara said. The key questions from an ethics standpoint include whether the politician makes a potential conflict of interest known and removes himself or herself from actions related to it, he added.
“I think in a small town there is a greater likelihood that people will accept that you will pay careful attention to friends and neighbors,” he said, adding that there may be some local gossip about it, but not a lot of public scrutiny. “At the national level, there will be far more people watching, there will be far more pressures to come forward to try to influence the outcome.”
Community Discussion
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Dig up much dirt?
If I wanted to read The Associated Press I would read it, why can't the NewsMiner post a few of it's own stories. Seriously, an awsome facial, are they kidding?
The Governor clearly knew something about all these issues and that should be a good thing...I voted for her because of her experience in life as we know it in Alaska and I expect her to make decisions based on life in Alaska...
I will judge her on her overall decisions and so far she has made a lot more good ones than bad ones
I voted her for governor based on her experience in Alaska, and I'd probably do it again. I probably won't be voting for her as vice president, though.
I ... I am, ... I am seriously, .... seriously shaking right now. P-p-p-problem is, ... I can't t-t-t-tell if it is from the hours of laughing and rolling on the floor that I have just done because of this article, .... or if the shaking is from my absolute disdain and rage for the Newsminer's obvious political war against Sarah Palin.
There are no more excuses or justification for what the News-miner is doing right now. I no longer buy this rag and believe soon they will begin to charge a registration fee to post comments on their website.
DNM, ... you are a joke and finished in this town.
Besides the facial there is that not-so-small matter of a zoning variation, one from which the Palins benefited directly. One wonders how many "common" folk could get such a variance so easily right when it is needed most? And, it should also be noted, the problems with the proxmity of the carport to the property line were never resolved as the Palins said they would be.
It seems the more we learn about Polly Purebred the more politician and less maverick she seems to be.
I guess the right-wing doesn't know or care anything about ethics. When I was on a state board, I was clearly told that you can't even let anyone who may have a desire to lobby you buy you lunch because of the appearance of impropriety. The point isn't whether a free facial is inexpensive - the point is that accepting gifts from entities that might benefit from your decisions at a later time, is wrong. Ted Stevens is on trial in federal court for the same thing right now. Palin has refused to back Uncle Ted for the Senate until his trial is over. Palin acts like she is against good ol' boy politics, against earmarks, and so on, claims that she is different, but she isn't. You right-wingers just want to believe the lies she tells and so get angry and defensive when someone points the obvious out for all to see.
and to think i used to be so proud of this paper.
I suggest we rename it. How about: Daily News Minus
So, let me get all this straight. You (those of you who now hate the News-Miner) are fed up with the extreme bias seemingly present in the articles pointing out flaws in Palin's character, correct?
I've asked this before and I'll ask it again. Which seems more likely? That the conservative (yes, the News-Miner is pretty conservative, believe it or not) small-town newspaper in a heavily conservative city in a heavily conservative state would be overcome by liberal bias to rail against the outrageously popular conservative governor; OR, that the articles against Palin are being written because people want to read them (the number of comments seems to back that one up) and because there is simply more dirt to be exposed (Palin has never been in the national spotlight, while the other players have been there for years)?
Think about this. You do NOT know with certainty all the things you think you know about Palin. Could it be, perhaps, that instead of a vast conspiracy, you have just been lied to by one of the few entities with an obvious motivation to do so, the national Republican Party?
Hey akjak, they don't care how many lies she tells or that she has 3 ethics complaints against her either. All they do is whine about anyone they feel is picking on Palin. If Palin wasn't such a poor excuse for a Governor the papers wouldn't have much to say about her.......DUH! And I can't believe how much you whine about our Alaska newspapers and others, you still come here to read it and comment. What a joke!
A free facial? Gorgeous flowers? Passing an aircraft tax exemption in Alaska for crying out loud!!!! Absolutely infuriating what our governor has done. What a great piece of journalism from Brett Blackledge of the Biassociated Press. Weekly World News couldn't do better.
Okay, point taken DNM. However, nobody is perfect - especially politicians! I am not even sure if I'm gonna vote for McCain or Obama. But the very obvious dislike that the DNM has against Palin is obvious to say the least. I want news and not opinions from my local paper. I will not renew my subscription and will encourage other people to do the same until the DNM has figured out how to be objective and fair to all. Report, don't influence!
Palin is a new national figure, she's gonna get ragged on for awhile, get used to it, quit complaining.
Ponderous.....your kind of rants about the News-Miner are typical during election years and have been going on for as long as I've been a reader....going on 25 years.....and the News-Miner is still around. The News-Miner is not going anywhere and I suggest you cease reading the paper, both in print and/or online if it upsets you so much. Seems you would be much happier reading the right wing blogs. And that goes for the rest of you whiners.....you know who you are!
SandyAK......it was not akjak above who complained about the DNM......it was akjlo just below akjak's post.
In the meantime, the emerging facts about Palin just keep getting more bizarre, day by day. From the Los Angeles Times, in part.......
"Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said."
This from a person who is a heartbeat away from having her finger on the nuclear trigger! If this and many other facts about Palin does not scare the bejeebers out of you, then you have something seriously wrong with your brain!
so if all of y'all are so mad and angry at the DNM for publishing AP stories about Palin ..... then why do you all keep readin' them and posting comments? LOL @ crazy Palindrones.
Obama's friend's at AP. Wounder how much he got paid?
Also, the Washington Post editor was off for the weekend and some Obama supporter wrote a Pebble Mine sour grapes, poor sports and sore losers "news" story. Nothing more than political propaganda.
The NO votes on the Pebble mine prop wiped out the yes votes 60:40%(??) and back east interest groups got creamed.
I voted NO to show them my extended second finger.
The attacks on Sarah are because Obama is afraid she could gain enough votes to sway the election.
Before we get done the AP will tells us to vote for Obama because they don't like the color of her toe nails and she did ... x...x...x..x..x..x.x.x.x.
Place your bets!!!
I bet she is waiting her chance to field dress a donkey.
Go Sarah Go!!!
We read the FDMN cause we are stupid. Haven't you been watching the View and SNL? Turns out Alaskans are also incestuous.
Rants, that the best you got for me? A right-wing rant at that! I believe I've told you on plenty of occassions that I hold no party affiliation. Not a one. So, ... since I don't fit into a mold you can easily label me, ... you go ahead and call me a right-wing. Nice. How many times has the DNM offered up stories of Obama ethic violations?
Don't they get it? Fairbanksans think all of this behavior is fine. Our corrupt officials don't stink!
I popped in to check out the Chicago Political Mud Slinging Machines latest shots at Sarah Palin and I see that among the other "evil" (*SHUDDER* LOL) Sarah got a Facial as a gift from a happy constituent and and had a citizen added to the public speaker's list at a City Council Meeting. HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!
What a pro Barack Hussein Obama piece of garbage piece! I have been chuckling ever since I started reading the stupidity in the article. It is really funny that the blithering idiot, Barack Hussein Obama who has to have the mud slingers run "INTERFERENCE FOR HIM" because he does NOT HAVE THE GONADS to take care of attacking his adversaries himself (I guess his being that "TYPICAL WHITE WOMAN's ILLEGITIMATE CHILD" and the DUMBO EARS have caused his testosterone level to bottom out and his estrogen level to SOAR!!!! LOL!!!!!
What an idiot story! LOL!!!! I love it!
Old Mr. Obama (Osama?) is really a "COMMODE-IAN".....
Love IT!
ive said it before ill say it again. valley trash. did anyone else catch her interview with katie couric? she made herself look so stupid. anytime she talks for more than 4 minutes you feel sorry for her. i cant wait for the debates with her and biden. its going to be funny.
There has always been a whole lot of holier than thou implicit in the Palin operation. The lady is going to be running the country in a few years it should not be unexpected that people would like to know that she actually is what she says she is. If she had some genuine corporate experience or even worked for the state as low level employee she would have some experience to guide her. Wasilla is one strange little not even a town more just a bunch of stores slowing down the entire state to a calculable degree on its main highway. So this bossy ol' gal from that place ends up running the state- I could give a rip if she can shoot and gut a moose. I do care if she can run our state like we elected her to do. As for bein V.P.
that is another question all together and as you might have figured out it is like hiring a teenager to run a giant corporation and people end up asking,"well how well did she cut grass and babysit?" They are asking these dumbass questions because they are trying to find something substantial to ask about that makes them feel a little bit of security about all of this. Personally I can't blame them.
free facials arent hard to come by.....or free flowers, and everybody I know gets free salmon, especially if your buddy just came back from fishing, uh oh, moose season....
You go girl.......Sara Rocks
Patrick Kerber...Stop your whinning...You think all of your Negative postings about Sarah Palin is going to swing Alaska to vote for Osama-Obama...Do you work for the Daily News Miner or what? I think most can figure out he is a Wolf in Sheeps clothing...Get used to hearing it...McCain/Palin-will be America's next President and Vice President.
IOKIARDI!
"Even fresh salmon to take home."
Wow!
That's some serious investigative journalism. I smell a Pulitzer. Oh wait, no, it's a different smell. Daily News Nuggets...
I have a question. With her campaign schedule keeping her out of the state, will this make her ineligible for the Permanent Fund payout?
I gotta smile when people claim the DNM has a liberal bent. Did these people just get off the plane? Makes me laugh.
For further enjoyment check out this link....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
It's a slippery slope from accepting a free facial from the local mom & pop store to accepting a free $250,000 house renovation from an oil services corporation.
I thought we had this argument about the immateriality of enjoying the perks of political office with Bill Clinton. Anyway, did you hear that Bill endorsed Sarah, although I can't remember if it was for VP or for some other position.
for some other position... Hahahahaha... wink wink, nudge nudge.
is this where we are supposed to act surprised?????
It just shows what $1200 can buy you in Alaska...I guess Palin was not a fool in knowing that she can be bought and so can other Alaskans. With so many obvious ethical issues blatantly in front of you...and Palin not denying any of them...shouldn't you by now face your own conscience...is it worth $1200? Remember, there is a price tag to that credit every Alaskan is getting....it's look the other way or see everything I do is for the good of you even if it happens to benefit me more mentality...wow, you Alaskans are nothing more than uneducated fools always thinking the rest of the world is against Palin...gees, get a grip...she's a con artist and the rest of the world is unraveling what you redneck Alaskans are too dimwitted to admit...good thing there's more common sense in this nation than not.
ofcourseobama-osama...Just another one of them dem-
wit sheep following the Wolf "Osama-Obama" in sheeps clothing. So Sad!
So Pathetic!
I had a similar problem with a garage being one foot over the property line. It was not a problem when I bought the place, but when I tried to sell it the buyer wanted assurance that it would never be an issue for him. I had to pay a lawyer to draw up lease papers and pay the neighbor several hundred dollars for a 99 year lease for the 1' by 20' piece of land. If only I had been politically connected.
What is sad and pathetic in these forums, longtime_alaskan, are those who use sophomoric name-calling, such as you just used above. It is juvenile and diminishes anything else you might be trying to say. I say this not only to you but to anyone who posts here, on both sides of the aisle.
Ah...the Fairbanks Propaganda Press rolls on... the best entertainment in Fairbanks this time of the year!! Free flowers, free salmon, a free massage. Wow, and to think we were worried about Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn...
Wow! Her father-in-law owned an airplane! You would think this was Alaska or someplace like that where owning an airplane is as common as owning an RV!
The reason I shop at Walmart, is they don’t advertises much with this newspaper. That’s what I tell their Headquarters when I write them. Maybe Some day, we will have two or three other papers here!
I would be perfectly willing to enjoy reading some dirt about Obama, I can't find any, hmm........
The DNM is not the only "rag" to print this news, get with the times! this is NEWS and comparing the Associated Press to some entertainment publication is just the kind of thing that compels people to stereotype Alaskans as they have been- Saturday Night Live, The View, Howard Stern, Jay Leno, etc. etc.
Sen. Stevens is on trial for the same thing(on a bigger scale)
Some people seem to be able to change their "reasonings" of "right and wrong" when it suits their purpose, this has been seen many times of people who claimed total and complete innocence as pure as the lord himself......until the FACTS were brought to light, over and over again.
What does the Daily News Miner actually do? All I've seen is cut and paste jobs from the AP slamming Sarah.
here's a list of recent AP articles blessed and sanctioned by the DNM (with grades attached).
Sarah receives campaign donations of $25 from people going to jail. D
Sarah bans books. F-
Sarah believes in creationism. F+
Sarah continues to build bridges to nowhere. C-
Sarah etched in cornfield. A+
Sarah is blessed by a witch doctor. B-
Sarah accepts free facials and salmon. C+
Do DNM employees actually ever write stories? I mean besides the occasional prep sports articles, what do they actually do all day?
np79-
Try and find a newspaper that doesn't use ASSOCIATED press articles.
Was Hank Bartos involved in the real estate deal?
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