How Much Has Alaska Really Spent On Ethics Investigations?

Sarah Palin said one of the reasons she’s leaving office is because of two million dollars it cost taxpayers to investigate her.

Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn’t been cheap – the State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that’s money NOT going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads.

But the personnel board says the cost of ethics investigations is $296,000, and some of the expenses were brought on by Palin, herself.

The bulk of the expenses — $187,797 — appear to stem from Troopergate, the messy case involving Palin’s former brother-in-law, a state trooper, who got on the wrong side with Palin and her family.

Palin herself initiated at least a part of the ethics case to counter a legislative investigation into the same matter.

Some of the expenses were incurred because investigators had to find Palin on the campaign trail. Tim Petumenos, the independent counsel hired by the personnel board for the Troopergate probe, had to travel to St. Louis, for example, to question Palin about some of the charges.

But if it’s true that her reason for resigning is because “they” are out to get her, does that mean she let the vultures win?

From the start of her vice-presidential campaign, she directed staffers to devote time and energy to quashing untrue or extraneous blog rumors. This weekend, she directed her lawyers to preemptively block stories about a federal investigation that wasn’t even happening. And frequently in between, she’s peppered the “mainstream media elite” and “liberal blogosphere” and those old “politics of personal destruction.”

Here is a complete list of the ethics complaints filed against Palin.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.