Bill Dedman at MSNBC has the details on the latest absurdity surrounding the Governor of Alaska.
On a request of all state emails sent to Todd Palin, the office of the Governor quoted $15 million dollars, and a release date well after the November election.
That is only a request for emails to the first dude! For emails sent between state employees and the McCain/Palin campaign... there will be another $15 million fee.
Requests of emails between state employees and the national park service? You guessed it... (Stephen Colbert's grasping outstretched hand comes to mind) $15 Million Please!
More below:
Here is the equation which the governors office is using to reach this ridiculous figure in order to provide public records as related by our intrepid reporter, Bill Dedman:
[T]he governor's office said it would take up to six hours of a programmer's time to assemble the e-mail of just a single state employee, then another two hours for "security" checks, and finally five hours to search the e-mail for whatever word or topic the requestor is seeking. At $73.87 an hour, that's $960.31 for a single e-mail account. And there are 16,000 full-time state employees. The cost quoted to the AP: $15,364,960.
And that's not including the copying costs. Although the e-mails are stored electronically in Microsoft Outlook and on backup servers, and although a blank CD-ROM costs only 41 cents at Capital Office Supply in Juneau, the governor's office says it can provide copies only on paper.
Why? Because lawyers need printouts so they can black out, or "redact," private or exempted information. That task is more difficult because the governor and other employees have used government e-mail accounts for some personal correspondence, and personal e-mail accounts for much of their government correspondence. The photocopies of those printouts will be a relative bargain, only 10 cents a page. A state administrator said he understood that such redaction could be done electronically, but that state offices weren't set up to do that.
That process of deleting information is likely to be so lengthy that most requestors won't be able to see the records until well after the next president and vice president are chosen, the governor's office said.
I am shocked... SHOCKED that the records would not be available until after the election.
Note that the tendency by Governor Palin and her cronies to conduct state business via private email is a major contributor to the increased cost and delay of the release of the information requested. Exactly why should legitimate requests for public records be adversely affected by the wrong doing of the people who want to keep the records from the public? The answer of course is that they should not be adversely affected, but when you consider that we are talking about the Republican running to replace Dick Cheney what else would anyone expect?
No wonder Palin is so freaking popular with the nutty right wing fringe. She has given every indication of carrying on the very worst traditions of the current administration.
I say make the Governors office pay for the cost... or the McCain/Palin campaign.
Well I've got to wrap this up and catch SNL!