Despite claim, Palin's pay was cut as mayor but went up.

TPM:

One thing Palin has frequently claimed as proof of her reform credentials is that she "took a pay cut" as Wasilla mayor. As I reported here yesterday, however, local Alaska press clippings seemed to show that this is only true in a very narrow sense.

The clippings indicate that while she did pass a pay-cut ordinance upon taking office, her pay actually went up during her overall tenure.

Now we have records from the city of Wasilla that confirm this. Here is the trajectory of her pay, according to the records:

Upon taking office on 10/14/1996: $64.200

01/01/1997: Pay was cut from $64,200 to $61,200
06/01/1998: Pay rose from $61,200 to $68,000
07/01/1999: Pay cut again from $68,000 to $66,000
10/01/1999: Pay rose from $66,000 to $68,000

From late 1999 until the end of her mayoralty in 2002, records show, her pay stayed at $68,000 -- higher than the $64,200 it was when she started out, and significantly higher than the $61,200 she initially cut it to.

The records don't explain the mechanisms by which the pay shifts happened. As best as we can determine, the cuts were engineered by Palin herself through some sort of executive mechanism, and the raises were City Council-mandated hikes.

What's the upshot? Well, Palin's claim that she "took a pay cut" as mayor is true in a narrow sense. She came in and took a pay cut that she engineered herself.

But in a broader sense, the claim is an oversimplification that borders on misleading. The bottom line is that whatever her intentions, over the course of her mayoralty Palin's pay went up thousands of dollars and stayed higher for years, money which she presumably kept. (If any proof emerges that she donated it to charity or channeled it back into city coffers in some other way, we'll happily update.)

This isn't another Bridge to Nowhere. But it does fit a pattern here, where Palin burnishes her reform credentials by describing intentions as realities or otherwise boiling down the record into easily-digestible sound-bites that at best are half-truths, as this latest one has now proven to be.

The McCain campaign has declined to comment on the pay hikes.

And notice that her salary on 6/1/98 when up over 6k. But much buried within last weekend's explosive NY Times story on Palin was a much-overlooked tidbit:

Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayor’s use — employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.

If the city money was paying for a Suburban for Palin's use as mayor and other expenses as mayor, then a paycut as mayor wouldn't hurt her given the fact that most likely her expenses is being paid by the city.Yet, Palin left a 20 million debt after she left as mayor for someone who had a pay cut.