By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer
As a vice presidential candidate, Gov. Sarah Palin has railed against federal earmarks, or congressional funding for pork-barrel projects. "In our state, we reformed the abuses of earmarks," Palin recently boasted to a rally in Lancaster, Pa. "We championed earmark reform up there," she said, "to stop Congress from wasting public money on things that didn't serve the public interest."
But musty records culled from the archives of the Wasilla, Alaska, city government reveal that Palin was directly involved in soliciting millions of dollars in earmarks for Wasilla when she was mayor. And she got help from a well-connected Washington lobbyist.
In a monthly status report to the city on March 7, 2000, newly hired "City Lobbyist" Steve Silver describes how the Palin administration had requested $6.6 million in federal earmarks for water and sewer improvements for Wasilla, and another $1 million for police equipment. Mayor Palin reviewed and signed the lobbyist's report, dated April 5, 2000.
Those earmark requests have not previously been disclosed, said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator for the non-profit Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group. Ashdown said the lobbyist's report offers a rare window into a normally closed-door process. "The document you've found is a peek behind the curtain of how earmarks get approved in Washington," he said.
Steve Silver, the Wasilla lobbyist, is a former top staffer for Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who now is under federal indictment for allegedly failing to disclose thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his Alaska home. He has pleaded not guilty. Under Palin, the city paid Silver about $40,000 a year to lobby on behalf of Wasilla (the contract began years before Stevens was indicted.)
In Silver's April 2000 memo to Palin, he writes that he had spent the month of February making appropriations requests to Sen. Stevens, a proud distributor of earmarks to his homestate of Alaska. "I am very hopeful that a good funding package will be approved later in the year," Silver writes.
Silver also attaches the five-page letter he sent directly to Senator Stevens and his staff, requesting the federal earmarks. Silver breaks down why Wasilla, "one of the fastest growing communities in Alaska," needs federal help, and says the small town "has tremendous needs which the State of Alaska cannot meet."
"This further confirms that Palin was very supportive of the earmark system," Ashdown said. "She was getting very specific feedback from this lobbyist."
In the letter, Silver asks Stevens for $6.6 million for wells, a pump house, a reservoir and piping to improve water and sewer service for the city of 7,000 people. Silver then asks his former boss for police equipment for Wasilla, including $100,000 worth of radar units, bulletproof vests, Remington shotguns, Colt rifles and other gear. (The police earmark seems to have shrunk from the initial $1 million request.)
It's unclear how successful Palin was in 2000 in securing earmarks for her state, Ashdown said. Part of the problem many critics have with earmarks is that they often are handed out in near secrecy, with few fingerprints left behind.
But Ashdown said that his research shows that as Mayor of Wasilla, between 1996-2002, Palin helped get nearly $27 million in earmarked federal funding. As previously reported, Palin and Silver were instrumental in bringing in millions for a local commuter rail project, a regional dispatch center, bus and airport facilities and other Wasilla projects.
In the lobbying documents, Silver also encourages Palin and other city officials to visit Washington, D.C., to meet with Sen. Stevens and the rest of the Alaska political delegation. "It is always a good idea for representatives of the City to meet personally with them during the process on their turf, so to speak," he writes.
As the Alaska papers have reported, Palin took him up on the invitation and began making regular D.C. trips. "It was about being face to face with those who were actually writing the budget," Palin told the Anchorage Daily News in 2006.
"We've been really successful getting earmarks," Wasilla public works director Archie Giddings added. "If we get a federal earmark, it's a direct result of lobbying," Giddings said. "You don't get an earmark unless you lobby for it."
A spokesman for the McCain/Palin campaign acknowledged to NBC News that Palin did solicit millions in earmarks when she was Mayor of Wasilla. "She was working within the system that was set up," said campaign spokesman Brian Rogers. But Rogers said that, as Governor of Alaska more recently, Palin has drastically cut federal earmarks to her state and battled entrenched politicians to reform the earmark system.
Updating: This afternoon, the McCain/Palin campaign added that, under Gov. Palin, "the number of earmarks requested by the Governor’s Office has fallen by about half, from $350 Million by her predecessor to $197 million" today. In addition, the campaign said that Palin has "vetoed nearly $500 million in government spending in three years." And it pointed out that Sen. Barack Obama "has requested nearly $1 billion in earmarks" in three years in office.
