"Maverick"-gate Update
LA Times:
"Palin appointed friends & donors to key posts in Alaska"
100-plus jobs went to campaign donors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications. Several donors got state-subsidized loans for business ventures of dubious public value.By Charles Piller
October 24, 2008
* More than 100 appointments to state posts -- nearly 1 in 4 -- went to campaign contributors or their relatives, sometimes without apparent regard to qualifications.
* Palin filled 16 state offices with appointees from families that donated $2,000 to $5,600 and were among her top political patrons.
* Several of Palin's leading campaign donors received state-subsidized industrial development loans of up to $3.6 million for business ventures of questionable public value.
* Palin picked a donor to replace the public safety commissioner she fired. But the new top cop had to resign days later under an ethics cloud. And Palin drew a formal ethics complaint still pending against her and several aides for allegedly helping another donor and fundraiser land a state job.
Most new governors install friends and supporters in state jobs. But Alaska historians say some of Palin's appointees were less qualified than those of her Republican and Democratic predecessors.
University of Alaska historian Steve Haycox said Palin has been a reformer. But he said she has a penchant for placing supporters, many of them ill-prepared, in high posts. He called it "cronyism" far beyond what previous governors have done and a contradiction of her high-minded philosophy.
Terrence Cole, an Alaska political historian, said Palin had in some cases shown "a disrespect for experience."
Administration officials disputed such criticism. They said campaign contributions were not a factor in state appointments. Frank Bailey, the state's directorof boards and commissions, in speaking for Palin, who was not available to answer inquiries from The Times, said, "We are always seeking the best-qualified folks."
In a little-noted sequel to Palin's controversial dismissal of her public safety commissioner, the governor replaced Walt Monegan with former small-town Police Chief Charles Kopp of Kenai. The appointment unraveled almost immediately in what Cole called a vetting catastrophe.
A previous sexual harassment complaint came to light and Kopp had to resign two weeks after taking over. Alaska paid him $10,000 in severance.
After another of Palin's campaign donors and fundraisers landed a civil service job with the state department of transportation, GOP activist Andree McLeod filed an ethics complaint against the governor and several aides, alleging that improper pressure was used to help Tom Lamal.
Lamal, a public school teacher in Fairbanks until he retired in 2006, was hired as a right-of-way agent despite reports of internal conflicts over whether he was qualified under state law.
E-mail messages between Palin aides, obtained by McLeod under the state public records act, indicate that the hiring was pushed "through the roadblocks" by a deputy to one of Palin's appointees. And Palin aide Bailey sent Lamal a congratulatory note saying, in part, "Well now your foot's back in the door and maybe we can tap you for other things."
Lamal declined to be interviewed for this article.
Palin spokesman William McAllister declined to comment because of an ongoing state personnel board inquiry...
The rest here - yes, almost unbelievably, there's even more (LINK)