Palin Wants to Charge $15 Million for Her Emails

October 17, 2008 | Posted by admin

Yes, you read that right. Sarah Palin wants to charge $15 million for her personal emails, that were used to conduct official state business. Some reformer she is. I can’t believe people actually trust her. She is no different from the other corrupt politicians that she claims to have battled and won. God help the United States if she ever serves in higher office. From MSNBC:

Sarah Palin’s office has discovered a renewable resource to bring millions of dollars into Alaska’s economy: the governor’s e-mails.

The office of the Republican vice-presidential nominee has quoted prices as high as $15 million for copies of state e-mails requested by news organizations and citizens. No matter what the price, most of the e-mails of Palin, her senior staff and other state employees won’t be made public until at least several weeks after the Nov. 4 presidential election, her office told msnbc.com on Thursday.

How did the cost reach $15 million? Let’s look at a typical request. When the Associated Press asked for all state e-mails sent to the governor’s husband, Todd Palin, her 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.

Thankfully, in Missouri, we have something called the Sunshine Law, which was made to make the interactions of the government more transparent. Our governor, Matt Blunt, recently handed over emails from his office under the Sunshine Law. He also tried to charge the state a ridiculous amount of money, but that amount was later reduced a great deal.

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