This photo taken Sunday, July, 26, 2009 (AP Photo/Al Grillo) (Al Grillo – AP)
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The Associated Press
JUNEAU, Alaska — The fallout from Sarah Palin's hasty retreat as governor is being cleaned up by the man she appointed attorney general in her waning days in office.
Attorney General Dan Sullivan has proposed broad changes to Alaska's ethics rules that Palin complained helped drive her out. One Sullivan recommendation that might sound familiar: Setting ethical standards for spouses and kids to travel with the governor or lieutenant governor at taxpayer expense.
Another would implement an opinion he issued in August, that the state could pay legal fees executive branch officials rack up fighting ethics complaints, if the official is exonerated by an attorney general, independent investigator or by the state Personnel Board, whose members are appointed by the governor.
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But they do speak directly to complaints raised during her tumultuous two-and-a-half years in office, and are aimed at clearing up gray areas and, according to Sullivan, discouraging abuse.
There is also a sense that some of this is simply cleaning the slate of all Palin's issues.
By the time she was named the Republican vice presidential nominee in the summer of 2008, she'd already rocked the political boat at home. She shunned the capital city, burned bridges with the political establishment and had an at-times prickly relationship with lawmakers – a situation that only worsened when she returned to Juneau for the 2009 legislative session.
Her emergence on the national political scene prompted a flood of public records requests, the volume of which state officials hadn't seen before and are still working to fulfill, and set off a flurry of ethics complaints.
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"You want to make political points against Sarah Palin? Hire a hall," said Rep. Mike Doogan, an Anchorage Democrat and former journalist. "Don't make the state of Alaska your soapbox. … This is really about what's right here, for anybody who finds themselves in that situation."
Anchorage resident Andree McLeod, who's filed numerous complaints against Palin, believes each had merit.
"This is the only avenue I have to address the misconduct of government officials," she said, adding that lawmakers are "totally out of line" if they believe any of her complaints were politically motivated.
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