Palin: Record vs. Facebook

Sarah Palin’s record vs. Sarah Palin’s Facebook

Craig Medred

Maybe it was the spirit of Christmas Future that this week spurred half-term Gov. Sarah Palin to unload on potential “insolvent states.” Because those like California failed to heed her warnings that President Obama’s economic stimulus “was equivalent to a federal bribe with fat strings attached,” she posted on Facebook, there is now talk of failing states and bailouts from Washington, D.C. — something that hasn’t happened since the Great Depression.

If only the other states had followed Alaska’s lead, added Palin or her ghostwriter. There is really no way to know who exactly wrote what — Palin or her staff — on Palin’s Facebook page, which the half-term, ex-governor uses to push her public policy agenda to millions. Alaska, it was posted on Facebook, knew how to manage a budget back when Palin was governor and “ran a surplus because we incentivized (sic) businesses, I didn’t spend it on fun and glamorous pet projects for lawmakers — though that would have made me quite popular with the earmark crowd. In fact, I vetoed more excessive spending than any governor in our state’s history, and I used the state’s surplus to bring our financial house in order …”

Earmarks are government expenditures dictated by the legislative branch of government instead of the executive branch. Alaska’s Legislature doesn’t do earmarks, which left some legislators wondering about Palin’s earmarks comment. More baffling, though, was the reference to “incentivized businesses.” As governor, Palin did start in motion a reduction in the business license fee from $100 to $50, but the old $100 fee wasn’t exactly hampering commerce. And besides, everyone in Alaska knows precisely where Palin’s huge budgetary surplus came from.

It came from oil. The state has always imposed significant taxes and royalties on oil. Oil pays for about 85 percent of state government through taxes, royalties and fees. And the state’s cut is tied to the price of crude, which was going for about $130 a barrel when Palin was governor. Given those prices, Alaska was looking at a tax windfall even before Palin and state Democrats upped the ante.

Read former Gov. Frank Murkowski’s take on the oil tax law backed by Sarah Palin: Alaska’s oil tax law must be rewritten to spur North Slope development

They went after big bucks the old-fashioned government way. They imposed hefty new taxes on the oil industry via a law known as “Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share,” or ACES, as Palin liked to call it. ACES increased Alaska’s take from the oil industry in fiscal year 2008 by more than $2.5 billion, according to a government analysis.

ACES was not a business incentive for the oil industry. It was, Palin once liked to boast, Alaskans taking their “fair share” of the black crude pumped up from deep beneath the state’s North Slope. The oil industry saw it more like a mob shakedown, which is neither here nor there. But it is worth noting the “equitable share” (or in the view of state conservatives, the big, fat tax) appears almost certain to be reduced by the Legislature this year because it appears to discourage the oil companies from drilling new wells. One might say ACES “disincentivized” the state’s biggest and most profitable business.

Palin was once proud of ACES for sticking it to Big Oil. Obviously, she has now decided that what the oil companies view as a Venezuelan approach to business taxation doesn’t fit with her present image as a “common-sense conservative.” A Hugo Chavez-style character would hardly qualify for that label, so Palin has created some gobbledygook about raising revenues in Alaska by “incentivizing businesses.”

The only Alaska business Sarah Palin really might be thought to have incentivized is the news business. Palin’s mushrooming celebrity in the wake of her failed bid for vice-president has created a great Alaska flood of “news” and television infotainment tens of miles wide and about an inch deep.

A key part of that news has revolved around her sometimes unique view of “facts,” as evidenced yet again in her most recent Facebook note.

“It’s one thing to veto spending and reduce the size of government when your state is broke,” she posted. “I did it when my state was flush with revenue from a surplus — though I had to fight politicians who wanted to spend like there was no tomorrow.”

There is one big problem there. Palin didn’t reduce the size of state government. When she was sworn in as governor, she inherited a fiscal year 2006 budget of $8.4 billion in operating and capital expenses.

On May 21, 2009, a little more than two months before resigning, then-Gov. Palin signed a fiscal year 2010 budget totaling $10.6 billion. It was the last budget she signed, and it did mark a reduction in state spending. It was less than the record $14.7 billion budget she’d approved the previous year.

By means of comparison, the budget for Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles, the state’s last big-spending governor, totaled $8.3 billion for fiscal year 2003, over $2 billion less than Palin’s last budget. The Republican who followed Knowles, Frank Murkowski, drastically cut state spending as oil prices dipped to $25 per barrel at mid-decade, but the budget had again crept back above $8 billion by the time Palin forced Murkowski out of office. By then, oil prices were climbing and the Legislature indeed wanted to start spending money.

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