At Greg Sargent’s Plum Line we learn that Palin’s departure, despite what she tells us, won’t free up any money for teachers or roads. Alaska doesn’t hire lawyers per job; it has them on staff and they get their salaries no matter what assignment is in front of them. Defending Palin against all those ethics complaints may be a waste of their time, but the state won’t be spending any less on its legal department if the complaints go away .
Sargent says Palin’s office arrives at a figure of $1.9 million spent to defend against the complaints. That’s from dividing the lawyers’ annual pay by the money they received during hours spent on the complaints.
TPM says only 3 ethics complaints are still pending, one-sixth of the original total. The others all got wrapped up quick enough, possibly because 9 of them went before the state’s personnel board, whose members can be fired by whoever’s governor.
update, Here’s a good point. Palin says she passed an ethics reform law and that this is the law that makes it possible to file ethics complaints against her. Steve Benen suggests that, under Palin’s own account of things, she passed an incompetently designed law. After all, from what Palin says it can be abused to drive a governor to resign for no good reason.
Best crackpot theory I've heard: Palin is resigning to become the public face for the Alaska Independence Movement, which contends the vote on Alaska statehood was fraudulent and illegal. Allegedly both Palin and her husband were once members of the movement, which is secretly funded by the major oil companies.
Once Alaska is an independent state, Palin would abolish the environmental restrictions on drilling imposed the United States government. As a reward, Palin will be rechristened Sarah the First, Empress of Alaska.
It makes as much sense as anything that has come directly from Palin's mouth.