Emperor’s Rants and Observations

During the campaign our Good Queen P promised she would favor the Mat-Su Valley. Although it’s the only campaign promise she has kept to date, she has taken care of her Mat-Su Valley constituents, even if it is at the expense of the rest of the state.

Our first hint of her intention to follow through with her “Valley First” promise was when she replaced the Agriculture Board with all Valley residents with the exception of one token Anchorage member who just happened to be from the Valley.

Our Good Queen really out did herself with her vetoes on the 2008 Capital Budget. With the notable exception of the veto of spending from the Railbelt Energy Fund, the Mat-Su got off relatively unscathed. But more than just the obvious favoritism shown to Mat-Su Valley is the lack of any consistency.

As Andy Halcro writes in his Blog:

She vetoed $1 million for the University of Alaska to design a new sports complex saying the should pay for it themselves, while approving $3 million for a meeting hall in Fairbanks and $630,000 for a new kitchen at the Wasilla Sports complex. She vetoed $1.5 million for deferred maintenance for Anchorage public facilities because it wasn’t a state’s responsibility, while approving $3.8 million for a new kitchen for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

I’m not complaining about the bulk of the vetoes. This isn’t me whining about my ox getting gored, I just want everyone’s ox to be gored equally. It doesn’t appear to me that the cuts were made along philosophical lines, which I would respect even if I didn’t agree. It almost seems like she targeted particular areas or legislative districts to reward or punish.

All she had to do was use the same criteria for her vetoes regardless of their region or election district. If improvements to sports facilities are not a “State Responsibility” in Anchorage, then they shouldn’t be a “State Responsibility” in Wasilla. You want to talk about “bias”? The Queen’s photo should be next to the word in the dictionary. You don’t find a better definition of the term than our Good Queen P.

How she can call herself a fiscal conservative when the Operating Budget is larger than ever is beyond me. The fact is both the operating and the capital budgets came in at a combined $350 million higher than what she promised. A far cry from the “Bare Bones Budget” she promised while campaigning.

Speaking of broken promises, what ever happened with “open and transparent” government? Why were these cuts made behind closed doors without discussion with legislators or other government leaders? Why can’t we get access to the information hidden behind this password protected page? Why is the budget information not presented in the original format of a spreadsheet? It’s nearly impossible to do any serious analysis when it’s presented in a PDF format that you can’t sort and query. Is that done on purpose, just so those of us that are interested in doing so, can’t? Take a look at the options provided for the viewing the 2007 Budget and compare that to what the options are for the 2008 Budget. Is this really what we thought we were going to get with the Queen’s open and transparent government?

As if favoritism, inconsistency, hiding and obfuscation of the data wasn’t bad enough, the worst is the lack of leadership and vision provided from the Queen’s throne. Why wasn’t she working more closely with Legislators and communicating her vision? Why wasn’t she speaking up during the legislative process to lead rather than react? Why isn’t she out front on this now explaining the favoritisim and inconsistencies? It is almost as though our Good Queen set this situation up so she would be seen as the hero of the people. Why no comment on the ballooning cost of the State’s operating budget?

She has failed to deliver on her promise of a bare bones budget. She has failed to even begin to address the operating budget. She has failed to step up and take a leadership position or provide any vision for Alaska’s future. She has failed to deliver on the promise of transparency and openness in the State Government. She has failed to treat all Alaskans equally across regions.

From where I sit it looks as Queen P was ill-prepared to take office. As I feared without any experience at the state level. It’s too bad that the people of Alaska have to suffer through her on the job training.  Perhaps the problem is that she hasn’t surrounded herself with competent people. Perhaps she is spending to much time making appearances and videos for late night TV, rather than working on the things that she was sent to do in Juneau… like being a leader, cutting the budget and making government open and transparent.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Palin, Politcs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.