Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Dismissal

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As of August 29, 2008, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is being investigated by an independent investigator hired by the legislature to determine whether she abused her power when she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan.

On July 11, 2008, Palin dismissed Monegan and instead offered him a position as executive director of the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which he turned down. Her power to fire him is not in dispute. Monegan alleged that his dismissal may have been an abuse of power tied to his reluctance to fire Palin's former brother-in law, an Alaska State Trooper, Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a divorce and child custody battle with Palin's sister, Molly McCann.

In 2006, before Palin was governor, Wooten was suspended for 10 days for threatening to kill McCann's (and Palin's) father, tasering his 11-year-old stepson, drinking beer in his squad car, and violating game laws. After a union protest, the suspension was reduced to five days.

Palin replaced Monegan with Chuck Kopp. Kopp had been previously suspended and investigated for sexual harrassment of an employee. At the time, Palin said she believed that the investigation had cleared him, but a letter of reprimand later emerged.

Palin said that her dismissal of Monegan was unrelated to the fact that he had not fired Wooten, and said that Monegan was instead dismissed for not adequately filling state trooper vacancies, and because he "did not turn out to be a team player on budgeting issues." Monegan claims that the two most-recent trooper graduating classes had the most recruits in years, and that Palin stated the audit Monegan provided made the administration look like it did not support the troopers. Palin acknowledged that there were a number of calls from her office on the matter, and that in one of these Frank Bailey, a member of her administration, mentioned "a family tie with the Governor there" and said "we don't know why this guy is still working." Both Palin and Bailey say that happened without her knowledge and was unrelated to her dismissal of Monegan, and Bailey was put on leave for two months for acting outside the scope of his authority as the Director of Boards and Commissions. Commissioner Monegan received no severance pay, though at the same time another dismissed Commissioner, Charles Kopp (who served only 11 days) received $10,000.

In August 2008, the Alaska Legislature hired Steve Branchflower to investigate Palin and her staff for possible abuse of power surrounding the dismissal. Democratic State Senator Hollis French, who is overseeing the investigation, says that the Palin administration has been cooperating and that subpoenas are unnecessary. The Palin administration itself was the first to release an audiotape of Bailey making inquiries about the status of the Wooten investigation. Palin later admitted that members of her staff had made about two dozen contacts with public safety officials about the trooper, including at least one conversation that could appear to be an attempt to pressure the commissioner. She said that her staff's contacts with the commission were not directed by her and she had little knowledge of them.