Palin denies Mat-Su bias in state budgeting(10/7/2007)

Published: October 7, 2007

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No politician was more closely associated with the Wasilla Multi-Use Sports Complex than Mayor Sarah Palin, who was first elected in 1996. For some, it remains a crowning achievement of her mayoral years.
But it's an unusual triumph for a politician who was known as an anti-tax, pro-property rights conservative -- involving, as it did, a tax increase and the condemnation of private land.
Palin urged voters in March 2002 to approve a new half-cent sales tax that would pay off the $14.7 million sports complex bond. She reminded voters how important sports had been in her own life (Palin was a member of a state championship basketball team at Wasilla High).
The tax measure passed by a mere 20 votes. Palin managed to have it both ways after the election, saying the close vote "confirms that we are fiscally conservative out here." She said it would be incentive to keep the project under budget.
The city succeeded at that. But several items, including emergency generators and the kitchen, had to be trimmed. Funds to finish those items were to be sought later from the state, said current Wasilla public works director Archie Giddings.
While the building went up as planned, title to the land beneath the building grew shaky.
The city had tried to buy the 70-acre tract, just off the Parks Highway west of town, from the state office of The Nature Conservancy, which had received it as a donation for resale from Dow Chemical. The city's 1998 offer of $146,000 was accepted, with a few access easement issues still to be worked out.
But an international land developer, Gary Lundgren, made a bid around the same time -- to the environmental group's national office, not its state office -- offering twice as much money.
Palin sued, using the services of Ken Jacobus, the Republican Party attorney she'd hired to represent Wasilla. Early rulings favored the city, but by the end of Palin's term, with the sport complex now eyed for the land, the federal judge indicated he was leaning the other way.
"Her heart was in the right place. But she got bamboozled on that project, to put it on land we didn't own," said local surveyor Steve Stoll, a critic of the sports complex proposal who vowed at the time to "eat his pants" if the arena ever made money.
In December 2002, one month after Palin handed the mayor's office over to her successor, Dianne Keller, the city used eminent domain to condemn the land for public purposes. The judge eventually ruled that the land was Lundgren's, leaving a four-year appraisal process to determine how much the city owed him for the land it took.
The ruling, which became final only two months ago, sets the value of the contested land at $860,000 at the time of condemnation, said Tom Klinkner, Wasilla's current attorney. Along with interest and lawyers' fees for both sides, the bill to Wasilla is expected to come to more than $1.7 million.
"With hindsight, the city might have chosen a different property for the sports complex, had they known all the factors that would eventually come into play," said Klinkner.
Adding a measure of insult to the injury, the state Legislature in 2006 passed a law forbidding cities in the future from condemning land for recreation, as Wasilla had done. The law was primarily a response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed a Connecticut city to seize waterfront homes for a strip mall. It said cities couldn't take land for economic development, but Republican lawmakers in Juneau insisted on a second part barring condemnation for recreational public purposes as well.
The city will pay the final bill out of its emergency reserves, said city deputy administrator Sandra Garley.
BUDGET SHORTFALL
With an ice rink and indoor turf field, the Wasilla complex has been popular and a draw for out-of-town visitors. But Steve Stoll's pants are safe -- the arena has not lived up to predictions that it would break even within a year. The facility continues to draw about $150,000 a year from the city's general fund to fill out its $850,000 operating budget, according to city finance director Susan Colligan.
The complex received an $860,000 appropriation in the state capital budget two years ago to begin work on emergency generators, city officials said. The money this year will help with that project and also build a kitchen.
It will be more of a preparation facility for caterers than a full-fledged kitchen, said arena manager Bruce Urban. He said the kitchen will allow the arena to host a wider variety of events, especially after April each year when the ice comes out.
Keller, the current Wasilla mayor, defended this year's capital budget spending of $630,000 as a public safety expense for the Multi-Use Sports Complex, which she described as a community evacuation shelter. In a letter addressing critics last summer, she invoked memories of Hurricane Katrina.
"Did we not learn anything after evacuees were directed to the Superdome and were stuck there with no food, water, cots, blankets or trained staff to assist with their immediate needs?" she wrote. "We are doing everything we can to make sure the MUSC has the tools, equipment and staff in place for this very necessary support when the need arises."
Palin said she was just doing her job when she advocated for the project as mayor, saying she'd recognized the need for a multi-purpose community center while growing up in the area.
"If anybody wants to throw blame for anything that goes wrong in the city of Wasilla or the Mat-Su Valley, that's what I'm here for. That's what you put your name on the dotted line for when you elect to run for office," she said. "The criticism goes with it."

Find Tom Kizzia online at adn.com/contact/tkizzia or call him at 907-235-4244.

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Some question funds for sports complex, bid to save dairy.

By TOM KIZZIA — Anchorage Daily News

Editor's note: This story was originally published October 7, 2007

When the smoke cleared after Gov. Sarah Palin's big cuts to the capital budget in June, one survivor that stood out was a $630,000 appropriation to the Wasilla Sports Complex.

Palin cut funds for 40 sports-related projects around Alaska, saying sports was not an essential government service. Gone was money for baseball and soccer fields, turf improvements for Dimond and Service high schools, roof repairs to the Sullivan Arena and planning for a long-sought University of Alaska Anchorage sports arena.

So why was there still money for a kitchen for the Wasilla Sports Complex -- not to mention funds for several other Mat-Su sports projects, including new lights at the Houston High School field and new bleachers at Palmer High?

Critics were quick to recall the former Wasilla mayor's campaign pledge to the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce last year that she would be "biased toward the Valley" as governor.

The comment was brushed off at the time as a lighthearted defense of her hometown. But it was recalled again this summer when Palin overhauled the state's agricultural bureaucracy in an attempt to save the state-owned Matanuska Maid, the only market for a handful of Mat-Su area dairy farmers.

Coupled with Palin's decision to leave the Juneau governor's residence once the Legislature adjourned -- wags dubbed her lakeside Wasilla home "the summer palace" -- and enroll her kids in Valley schools this fall, the former Miss Wasilla's actions have some critics asking whether her down-home style includes a sentimental streak capable of clouding her judgment.

To be sure, the complaints -- heard on talk radio and in letters columns -- have amounted more to a light drizzle than a deluge.

"I don't think there's any way you can get around the cronyism and favoritism," says Andrew Halcro, a former independent candidate for governor who has been harsher than most. "It begs the question about other issues down the road."

In an interview Friday, Palin denied showing any bias toward the Mat-Su area.

When her cuts to the capital budget were complete, she said, Mat-Su got 8.5 percent of the spending, while Anchorage got 22.8 percent. Those are proper proportions, she said. She added that the cuts -- more than $230 million in all -- were based on statewide criteria, not election districts.

"If the criticism is that I cheer for my hometown team too often, I'm going to be cheering for my kids' teams," Palin said Friday. "The numbers speak for themselves in the budget. People can take me at my word or not, that I am not biased towards or against any region in Alaska."

HIGH-PRIORITY ITEMS

As to the specific Mat-Su sports projects, Palin said local legislators and municipal governments had made them high-priority items. The sports items cut elsewhere did not rank so high on local lists, she said.

The Wasilla arena, in particular, was primarily a safety issue, she said, because the new kitchen would make the facility usable as an emergency shelter. The old Palmer bleachers were also a safety concern, she added.

Local officials defended the $630,000 for Wasilla's big hockey and indoor-turf arena. While schools often serve as emergency shelters in other parts of the state, said arena manager Bruce Urban, where would people go if a major earthquake or forest fire occurred in Wasilla while schools were in session?

But city officials conceded the new kitchen will also allow them to attract conventions and other business to help reduce operating subsidies to the sports arena.

That was, in fact, part of the plan when voters first approved the complex in 2002, after a sales-tax-increase campaign that was pushed vigorously by Wasilla's mayor at the time, Sarah Palin.

Despite the ongoing subsidies, the $15 million sports arena has been popular in the area and a feather in the cap locally for Palin, who broke with her usual anti-tax stance to get the facility approved.

But the project comes with an embarrassing legal legacy, for which the bill is only now coming due. Efforts to obtain the land where the complex was eventually built began under Palin, who served as chief administrator under Wasilla's form of government. Those efforts resulted in a long losing court battle and a controversial decision to condemn the land for recreational purposes.

Two months ago, Wasilla was told it would have to pay more than $1.7 million, including interest and legal fees, to clear the title. That compares to $146,000 that the city thought it would spend when it set out under Palin to buy the land in 1998.

Meanwhile, the state has been helping Wasilla turn the sports arena into more of a "multi-use" facility. The latest capital budget item brings to $1.5 million the total state aid for expansion since the facility was finished. Palin defended the expense -- but said she wants to reduce such state spending next year and increase municipal aid, so that local governments decide such priorities for themselves.

"They make the decision on whether they're going to get Astroturf on their field or whether their museum is going to be expanded," she said "I don't think it should be the state administration's prerogative to be picking and choosing which projects get funded."

MATANUSKA MAID

Agriculture issues in Palin's first year as governor have focused on the Mat-Su region. She said it was natural to look to the state's main agricultural area for expertise.

When a state panel announced plans to shut down money-losing Matanuska Maid, Palin responded to an outcry from Valley dairy farmers and fired the state Board of Agriculture and Conservation, which oversees the panel. The seven new members she appointed were all from the Mat-Su area. That group has now been charged with finding an exit strategy for the state.

In August, Palin appointed another Mat-Su resident, Franci Havemeister, as the state director of agriculture. A former real estate agent, Havemeister did not have a professional background like some applicants for the post, but she was the daughter-in-law of Bob Havemeister, one of the four surviving Mat-Su dairy farmers. She had organized a pro-Matanuska Maid demonstration in June where protestors waved "Save the Cows" signs.

Palin said Havemeister was energetic, nonpolitical and sensitive to the need to revitalize agriculture. Several previous directors were Mat-Su farmers themselves, she said. Palin praised the unpaid and selfless work of her agricultural board, particularly chairwoman Kristan Cole, another Valley real estate agent. She said the board was working to find a way to get the state-owned dairy into private hands by the end of the year.

"They're doing all this for the right reasons. It's not doing favors for anybody in the Mat-Su Valley," Palin said.

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