MSNBC has a handful of tantalizing tidbits on the role Todd Palin played in his wife’s administration in Alaska. Near the end, the story mentions the Easley e-mail scandal.
But the part that caught my attention was the quoted cost of obtaining the e-mails:
When msnbc.com, other news organizations and citizens of Alaska sought Palin e-mail records after she was named the Republican vice presidential running mate in August 2008, the state initially quoted a cost as high as $15 million for state technicians to find the e-mails, for state interns to print out the e-mails one at a time, for state lawyers to read them to determine what information could be withheld, and for a print shop to photocopy them.
That’s still the laborious approach the state has taken, at what it says is a cost of more than $500,000 in staff time, but the prices it is charging have come down considerably. The state charged msnbc.com only $323.58 for the records released this week.
State officials said they could not figure out how to electronically search or distribute the e-mails. But such work is the bread and butter of firms like Crivella West, a Pittsburgh company which offered to do that work for the state for free. After the state ignored its offer, msnbc.com contacted the company, which agreed to scan in the photocopies to turn them back into searchable text, and to set up the documents in a public archive.
The grinding gears of state government are a deafening sound, even in the far north.
