Source:
PUBLICAAlaska Gov. Sarah Palin has portrayed herself as a foe of pork-barrel spending, pointing in particular to her role in killing the $398 million "Bridge to Nowhere” between Ketchikan (pop. 7,400) and its airport on Gravina Island (pop. 50). I "told the Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,'" she said in her speech accepting the Republican vice presidential nomination. "If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves."
But Gov. Palin’s administration acknowledges that it is still pursuing a project that would link Ketchikan to its airport -- with the help of as much as $73 million in federal funds earmarked by Congress for the original project.
"What the media isn't reporting is that the project isn't dead," Roger Wetherell, spokesman for Alaska’s Department of Transportation, said. In a process begun this past winter, the state’s DOT is currently considering (PDF) a number of alternative solutions (five other possible bridges or three different ferry routes) to link Ketchikan and Gravina Island.
The DOT has not yet developed cost estimates for those proposals, Wetherell said, but $73 million of the approximately $223 million Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK) earmarked for the bridge in 2005 has been set aside for the Gravina Access Project.
Read more:
http://www.propublica.org/article/palin-administration-still-pursuing-nowhere-project-913/
Story is via TPM...
Just Gets Better and Better ...
Turns out Palin didn't quite shut down the Bridge to Nowhere after all. She held on to $73 million federal dollars for a scaled down Bridge to Nowhere.
Late Update: Extra bonus McCain Lie (tm) unearthed! Down in the aforelinked article McCain spokesman Peter Feldman says this: "The fact is that once Governor Palin was elected and had an opportunity to look closely at the project, she killed it. She fought for Congress to kill the provision, but they sent the funds anyway. Palin fired the kill shot by not using a dime of that money on the bridge. (emphasis added)" Feldman appears now to be saying that Palin either campaigned against the original earmark or campaigned for it to be killed after it was approved. To the best of my knowledge I have never even heard them claim this before. But keep the timeline in mind. The Bridge to Nowhere earmark was killed in 2005, a year before Palin even ran for governor. And when she ran in 2006 she ran as a strong pro-Bridge candidate. So when exactly is Feldman claiming she campaigned against the bridge earmark? When she was Mayor of Wasilla?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/216579.php
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