Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Yee says Palin contract was shredded

(04-13) 14:21 PDT Sacramento - --


Bags containing shredded documents that students at California State University Stanislaus found evidence of documents related to an upcoming speaking engagement by Sarah Palin at the school. The students appeared at a Sacramento news conference with State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco this morning and said they found the documents on Friday in a dumpster outside the school's administration building in Turlock.




Students at Cal State Stanislaus have discovered evidence that documents related to an upcoming speaking engagement by Sarah Palin were shredded and dumped after the university claimed that no public documents existed, a state senator said on Tuesday.

The students appeared at a Sacramento news conference with State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco this morning and said they found the documents on Friday in a dumpster outside the school's administration building in Turlock. They include four pages of a contract for a "speaker" who will be traveling from Anchorage, though they do not identify the speaker by name.

The senator in March questioned how much the university is paying the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate for her speaking engagement on June 25. The university said a private university foundation contracted Palin for the $500-a-plate event and the contract included a privacy clause preventing officials from disclosing the speaker's fee.

Yee argues that the CSU Stanislaus Foundation includes university officials and that the contract should be a public record. He's sponsoring a bill that would require private university foundations, including CSU Stanislaus Foundation, to comply with the Public Records Act.

Yee claimed the public has a right to know what the university foundation is paying Palin, particularly at a time of rising student fees, and he asked for documents related to her appearance but the university said it had no documents.

The students said they were tipped off that university officials were disposing of documents and found part of the contract, along with other documents - some shredded - after they investigated the tip. Foundation documents were mixed in with official university documents and the foundation is housed in university property, the students said.

The contract pages found intact detail travel and accommodation requirements for the speaker, which Yee said is Palin. Those include two first-class airline tickets from Anchorage, along with two business-class tickets between the destination and the lower 48 states. It also specifies the speaker have a one-bedroom suite and two single rooms in a deluxe hotel. Yee released the documents to the media.

The contract, dated March 16, is from the Washington Speakers Bureau. That organization represents Palin and sets up her speaking engagements.

School officials "think they are in another world where they can do as they damn well please and that's not going to happen on my watch, that's not going to happen on the students watch, that's not going to happen on any watch because that's not how we do business here in the state of California," Yee said.

A university spokeswoman was not immediately available for comment on the documents.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/13/BABN1CU2I7.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0l2MSazAj


Submitted by Jim Alex

1 comment:

Montana said...

Almost daily we listen to her trash talk (she is in the Quayle and “W” league), all thanks to the man who now claims that he never called himself a maverick, McCain, right, tell us another. She spends her days trash talking it is only fitting that someone found a great place for her contract. I guess some dumpster diving found it, All’s Well That Ends Well.