According to Governing Magazine, the same magazine which gave Virginia the highest grade of "A-" (best in the country, tied with Utah and Washington State), gave Alaska a "C" (including "C-" grades for "money," "people," and "infrastructure"). Check this out:
Recently, for example, Governor Sarah Palin announced a plan to salt away a two-year $7.1 billion surplus produced by high-priced oil. Yet, not long ago, the Division of Finance had to cancel a plan to procure a much needed new payroll system because it was short a few million dollars. The present payroll system has a backlog of more than 20 man-years of requested fixes, and the time isn't far away when the system will simply be unredeemable.
Great, huh? Or check this out, also on Sarah Palin's watch:
...In 2007, the legislature added $200 million in supplemental projects to the $734 million capital budget. Very little went to a deferred-maintenance backlog that exceeds $1 billion for state buildings alone. A Department of Transportation and Public Facilities official says, "I don't have a clue how they prioritize."
Heckuva job.
I've heard her described by some conservatives as a libertarian and a fiscal conservative. These are laughable descriptions -- she is some bizarre combination of the right-wing populism of Mike Huckabee and the religious socialism of George W. Bush when it comes to domestic spending, a bible-thumping right wing social conservative that sees nothing wrong with trying to force her worldview onto the populace at large (also in common with Huckabe), and apparently a right-wing millenialist when it comes to foreign policy. I can hardly think of a more dangerous combination of political traits in one person.
But, I mean, wait until the Republican base hears about these windfall taxes. Okay, so they won't hear about that because they prefer to bury their heads in the sand and believe in fantasies and fairy tales, but it's true nonetheless.
She's a disaster, and it will only get worse once she has to withstand press scrutiny and a debate with Joe Biden.
Interesting reading. This is about the only potentially positive attribute about her I've encountered so far -- not windfall taxes (I think they're stupid), but the fact that she didn't bow down and obey the oil lobby. Of course, to call her an ethics reformer is otherwise laughable -- she worked hand in glove with Ted Stevens (helping run his PAC at one point). What she demonstrates is a real desire for advancement, and it was at the expense of the similarly ethically troubled Frank Murkowski in '06.
The flagrant abuses of power as both Mayor and Governor are the most troubling.
So it's a ranking where everyone passed simply by showing up. Very few C's however -- looks like only 4 or 5 states at that level, so it's definitely not "average" as a "C" rating might suggest in the academic world.