The Wasilla City Council is requiring Menard to pay the city back the entire cost of his trip to Sitka and forbidding him from any more travel on city business until his term expires in October 2013.
Menard was staying at the Westmark in Sitka earlier this month for a meeting of the Alaska Municipal League. The hotel reported that damage to his room included urine on two mattresses and a chair, vomit on the carpet, ruined bedding, and a burned mattress. It's not clear exactly how it was burned but the hotel bill said there had been smoking in what was a non-smoking room.
The Wasilla City Council met in a closed session at the end of its regular meeting Monday night to decide what to do about it. Before the session began, Menard gave a brief statement, according to an audio recording provided by the city.
"I would like to start off by ..." he began, followed by a long pause. When he resumed his voice was breaking slightly. "Apologizing publicly for my actions in Sitka. The City of Wasilla, my friends and family, I'm truly embarrassed and sorry, truly sorry."
"I sit here before you a humbled man 11 days sober and working a program. And only through the grace of God I will redeem myself. And I thank you," he said.
Menard is a member of one of the best known and most influential families in the Mat-Su. His mother, Linda Menard, is a state senator who represents Wasilla. His father, Curt Menard, was a longtime state legislator and friend of the Palin family who was serving as the Matanuska-Susitna Borough mayor when he died in 2009 after an extended battle with cancer.
Then-Gov. Sarah Palin appointed Steve Menard to fill out his father's term on the Alaska Railroad's board of directors. He is no longer on the railroad board but Gov. Sean Parnell last year appointed him to a public seat on the Alaska Royalty Oil and Gas Development Advisory Board for a term that expires in 2015.
It appears that everybody wants to give Menard the benefit of the doubt here, including Anne Kilkenny, but part of me is absolutely certain that if this guy's last name was not "Menard," and he was not best chums with the Palins, that he would be out on his keister.
According to the spokesperson for the Westmark Sitka, they actually "went light on the charges," which also makes me wonder who was pressuring whom.
I guess I find this story a little frustrating because in my efforts, and the efforts of others, to get people in Wasilla to go on the record with what they know about the Palins, we have been told over and over again that people in that town are intimidated because if they say anything Sarah and Todd's friends will make their life hell.
I have always felt that the Menards were part of this, "Wasilla Mafia" if you will, that are still actively protecting the Palins. (Steve Menard is even mentioned in an e-mail by Sarah back in 2005 when she was trying to get her ex-brother-in-law Mike Wooten fired from the State Troopers.)
Anyhow I do hope that Steve Menard gets his life back together, because everybody deserves a second chance. However this is it, and if there are any other similar incidents I expect him to be treated much more firmly, and to lose his seat on the Wasilla city council, as well as his seat on the Alaska Royalty Oil and Gas Advisory Board
Whether he is a Palin family friend or not.
