Palin Speaks on Troopergate, Per Diem, Family Travel

Gov. Sarah Palin sat for an interview with The Anchorage Daily News in her Wasilla home, where moose chili was simmering in a crock pot.

The whole interview is worth a read. She hits many topics, including a run in 2012. Here are a few highlights.

On Trooperage,

The whole {Walter] Monegan thing, I am glad that we’ve already gone through two different processes now — the personnel board, which is where it should have been all along, and the legislative investigation of it also. It’s done. It’s over. People need to move on.

The second Troopergate inquiry, run by political appointees, cleared Palin of all wrongdoing. The first report, though, found she had violated a state law and abused her power in trying to get her former brother in-law fired. If the legislature decides to take action against Palin, it won’t be before the legislative session begins in January.

On collecting per diem and charging the state for taking her daughters on trips with her, Palin said she was within her rights:

We’ve always followed the law and fully disclosed all that. The choice there in many months of the Juneau mansion being re-plumbed and all the improvements being made in the infrastructure of the Juneau house, where we weren’t going to be there anyway. Knowing that in the end it would have cost the state more money to do what other governors had done and that is either charge the state for hotel rooms. Or the state rents you an apartment like they did for Gov. Murkowski. We said no, we just won’t sell our house, knowing that we’re going to spend quite a bit of time here, especially those months where the remodels were taking place in the governor’s mansion. And we would disclose my per diem, we wouldn’t try to hide it … trying to go above and beyond, not accepting any per diem for the kids or Todd at all, they’ve lived outside of the governor’s house. Trying to follow the rules and doing what is legal and ethical and full disclosure.

Same with the family’s travel. That’s baffled me that all of a sudden two years later, again, never having tried to hide anything with either traveling back and forth to Juneau for first family events that were outside the capital city, in bringing Piper and, once in a while, Willow with me also, that anybody would think that I was trying to hide that they came with me … just trying to do my job and part of my job is with the first family, having them with me at some of these events.

Just to note, Palin may owe back taxes on the per diem payments and the kids weren’t invited to some of those events.