By Aram Roston, NBC News Producer
Governor Sarah Palin used her state law-enforcement agency's twin-engine plane to travel around Alaska, accounting for about 20 percent of its flying time, according to a document obtained by NBC News. The police plane is a King Air turboprop that is primarily used for police-related missions and search and rescue missions.
The governor's flight usage is laid out in a chart prepared by the Alaska Department of Public Safety and obtained by NBC News under the state's Freedom of Information law. (The governor's flight usage is indicated as "Gov" on the chart, and marked in purple.)
On the campaign trail, Gov. Palin has touted her credentials as a reformer by discussing how she sold off the state's other plane, a jet, and even listed it on eBay. Her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, had used that plane for travel.
But after Palin's sale of the state jet following her inauguration as governor, the document shows, she did not stop flying on state planes. Gov. Palin used her Public Safety department's prop plane for 110 hours, or 19 percent of its flight time, in 2007 and 2008. The Department of Corrections used it 28 percent of the time, and Alaska Wildlife troopers also used it 28 percent of the time. A spokesman for the McCain Palin campaign defended the flights, saying the governor needed to use the state Public Safety plane because of the remote geography of Alaska. "For the governor to perform her duty visiting rural communities the use of an aircraft was necessary," a campaign spokesman said.
Tensions over Gov. Palin's use of the plane first became public last month, with the release of an affidavit by her husband, Todd Palin. "It seemed like whenever Sarah needed this plane, it was unavailable," Todd Palin wrote. The affidavit was submitted to investigators probing why Palin fired her Commissioner of Public Safety, Walt Monegan, earlier this year. That investigative report was released this month.
In his affidavit, Todd Palin complained that the state's police agency was not allowing his wife to use the King Air plane. "We were concerned that the Department of Public Safety was retaliating against Sarah for selling the Murkowski jet that the Department of Public Safety officials enjoyed using," he wrote.
Walt Monegan, in an interview with NBC earlier this month, said the plane was indeed a source of contention. "The governor would be upset if the plane was not at her disposal," he said. "She would say, 'I need the aircraft' and it was at the shop."
John Glass, the current Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, says the plane-usage chart was prepared in response to requests by Sarah Palin's office, after the plane often was not available. "The pie chart was made to show the usage of the airplane."
Glass said since the plane was old, it needed frequent maintenance. He said,"We provided the plane when it was available." He says the plane is primarily intended for law enforcement missions. "The priority is for search and rescue or police related missions and when it is not being used for that it can be used for the governor."
A spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign said that the state Department of Public Safety had frequently denied Palin use of the plane. "The lack of availability of the plane went beyond reasonable expectations of being down for maintenance," Palin spokesman Taylor Griffin said.
Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-profit budget watchdog group, says the chart is the first indication of how extensively Palin used the government's plane--despite her frequent boasts about selling the state jet.
"I would say the trouble the governor runs into is the fact that they used the selling of the plane on eBay as part of the reform story. She was trying to get great public relations without giving up flying around on a government plane," Ashdown said.
Update. A spokesman for Gov. Palin emailed us Thursday with an additional comment:
"Aviation is a primary mode of transport in Alaska because much of Alaska is unreachable except by plane. Alaska’s Governor must travel by aircraft to reach the rural communities around the state that she couldn’t otherwise reach. Palin said the “luxury jet was over the top," but that doesn’t mean that the Governor didn’t need to travel by air. But, a jet was completely impractical. Many of Alaska’s rural communities have gravel runways that the jet can’t land on. Why does the state need a jet when they have a less expensive and more practical way to accomplish the same need?
The jet served little practical purpose except as a luxury so Governor Palin got rid of it. The prisoners DPS used the jet to transport could be moved on commercial aircraft. The Governor could use the King Air or commercial air service. That doesn’t mean that aviation was unnecessary, just that a luxury jet was not. This is a Governor who got rid of the cook at the Governor’s mansion, paired down her security detail, and drove herself to work. Getting rid of the plane was consistent with everything else she has done to reduce the operating costs of the first family."
