:Her sheriff specifically said the new law would make it so they couldn't bill the insurance companies or the perpetrators of the crime. He never said wow, I wish we could bill the victim. The information you are trying to force in was and is a red herring and your continued reinsertion hoping that people will see it as they come to our site is inappropiate - and you know it. [[User:Learn together|Learn together]] 10:57, 15 September 2008 (EDT)
===Closure (hopefully)===
As promised, I'm not going to try and reinsert anything on the main article page about this, but I wanted to state it here on the Talk page for the record. In response to the comment above, "The simple fact is she did not put in the law, did not campaign for it, did not even discuss it", which had no supporting evidence to back it up, I offer the following:
:I agree that at some point someone made a decision to start charging victims up front for rape kits, but who? Apparently we now have the answer, backed up with documentation, and it's Sarah Palin and the police chief she appointed, Charlie Fannon. The [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-alperinsheriff/sarah-palin-instituted-ra_b_125833.html source] I'm referencing is an article in the Huffington Post, but while many here dismiss that site as biased, the reporting in this article is solid, and the facts can be verified by anyone. Wasilla's budgets are available online, and the quotes are from recent interviews with key individuals.
:Here's the summary. When Palin took office as Mayor, the police chief at the time was Irl Stambaugh. Stambaugh is on record as saying that while he led the police department, victims of sexual assault were not charged for their rape-test kits. The Wasilla city budget even had a provision to fund this expense ($15,000 for 1993-1994, $5,000 for 1994-1995 & 1995-1996, and $13,000 for 1996-1997). During the 1996-1997 budget year, $11,625 of the allocated $13K was spent, so there were definitely victims of sexual assault in Wasilla benefiting from the no-charge policy.
:Then Palin took office she replaced Stambaugh with Fannon, who requested $7,298 for that allocation in 1997-1998 and spent $3,454. It was in 1998 that the policy changed to charge the cost of rape-test kits to the victim, and while he requested $3,000 as a contingency only $205 was spent - the victims of sexual assault in ''Wasilla paid the rest''.
:This confirms that the change in policy took place during Palin's term as mayor, and was enacted by the police chief she hand-picked. Fannon knew exactly how much the 2000 state law requiring the city pay for rape-test kits would cost the taxpayers, because he knew how much the Wasilla budget allocation for these kits was cut when he instituted the victim-pays policy in 1998.
:As for the final question, "Did Palin know herself?", I'd have to say "yes" for two objective reasons. First, as mayor she was responsible for the Wasilla budget, touted her close oversight of it as part of her "executive experience", and signed off on it every year. She was a both a cost-cutting reformer and politically savvy, so it's unlikely that her police chief would cut thousands of dollars from both an allocation and the actual related expenses without any discussion as to why, particularly if it was because he was now making victims pay for a politically-sensitive type of forensic test Wasilla had paid for in the past. This is supported by the fact that Palin's spokesperson will talk about her belief that rape victims "should not have to pay" for these tests, but when asked for a straightforward "Was she aware of this policy while mayor?" the response is a deliberate "No comment".
Hopefully this will provide convincing evidence and closure for those who feel that this is some kind of rumor-based smear against Palin. The simple truth is that this was a policy started under her administration and officially acknowledged in the related budget cuts that Palin signed off on. She should be willing to talk about this policy on the record, just like any other policy decision made during her administration. I've had my say. --[[User:DinsdaleP|DinsdaleP]] 11:06, 18 September 2008 (EDT)
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