Palin's Boondoggle: Where that $20 Deficit Came From

[tishaLA]

Pretty interesting. It seems that as mayor she wanted to build a sports complex and managed to get passage of the bond ($14.7 million) by just 20 votes. She went on to buy land, with help from Dow Chemical, but that deal fell through because a developer offered twice as much. What did Sassy Sara do? She sued...and ended up giving the city the bill when she finally lost--to the tune of $1.7 million. And the city condemned the land to claim it under eminent domain. In her wake, the republicon-controlled legislature has made it illegal to condemn land for recreational use.

What's more, the facility isn't even solvent. It requires $150,000/yr from the state just to cover operating expenses. It was a huge clusterfuck but "her heart was in the right place."

Some good tidbits:

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. http://dwb.adn.com/news/alaska/matsu/v-printer/story/9362341p-9276011c.html