Palin Approved Gov’t Hiring for Friend and Co-InvestorYou’ll remember that earlier this week we mentioned that Sarah Palin fired one of her aides, after she discovered he was having an affair with a close (married) friend of the family, Deborah Richter.
Bloomberg reports today that Richter is also an appointee of the Palin administration, and a co-owner with Palin on a land investment of 30 acres of property near a lake in Petersville, Alaska, worth about $47,000. Richter has only a year of college education, after which she’s worked “bookkeeping and finance jobs” before serving as Palin’s gubernatorial campaign treasurer. Not long after being made governor, Palin approved Richter’s hiring as the “director of a division that distributes dividends to Alaskans from the state’s oil-wealth savings account.”
From Bloomberg:
“It sounds like a patronage deal for someone who ran your campaign; that’s pretty normal,” said Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. “What’s not normal is that they have business dealings together.”No evidence has emerged to suggest that laws were broken in the appointment, and Richter said she, “didn’t go in there with any promises from the governor or the chief of staff or anybody. I turned in my resume” to the governor’s transition team “and I didn’t know if anyone was going to call me.”
“She was qualified,” said Pat Galvin, commissioner of the Department of Revenue and Richter’s boss. Galvin said he also interviewed other people for the job and that Richter has done well. He said Palin’s office approved his selection of Richter.