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Creamery Biz Milked Subsidies Under Palin
Case gives ammo to critics of Palin's Alaska spending record
By Rob Quinn
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Posted Sep 16, 08 5:02 AM CDT
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(Newser)
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Critics who say Sarah Palin is not as fiscally conservative as she claims are questioning extended subsidies paid to a state-run creamery, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Alaska Creamery Board recommended closing the operation in 2007 after it fell $1.5 million in the red. Palin instead fired the board and replaced it with one headed by a childhood friend.
The new board ordered the creamery to be kept open, only to close it six months later—after it had cost Alaska's taxpayers another $800,000. Some Alaskans charge that Palin was keeping her constituents happy at a high cost to the state's purse, while others say she was doing the prudent thing to give local dairy farmers more time to find new markets. The creamery was taken over by the state of Alaska after it declared bankruptcy in 1984.