Palin inherited flush coffers, tax revenue and when on to spend it like a drunken sailor

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-palin-wasilla_bdsep28,0,1922879.story

Budgets under her watch grew 3 times faster than Wasilla

By Bob Secter and Andrew Zajac | Chicago Tribune reporters
10:04 PM CDT, September 27, 2008

To play up her management skills, Sarah Palin regularly boasts of the six years she spent as mayor of Alaska's fastest-growing city. What the Republican vice presidential candidate doesn't mention is that spending during her tenure grew nearly three times faster than the population did.

The operating budgets crafted by Palin for the city of Wasilla rose 70 percent during her two terms as mayor from 1996 to 2002, according to city records. Over the same time, the town grew by about 25 percent.

John McCain's presidential campaign is packaging his running mate as a seasoned and frugal government administrator who reduced the property tax and several other local levies.

But city records demonstrate that Palin's years in Wasilla were far from a portrait of conservative fiscal management. She bankrolled a wave of spending—as well as those tax cuts—with revenues from a new sales tax pushed by her predecessor and from federal earmarks paid for by U.S. taxpayers.