Joe Miller legal challenges cost state $268K

Summary: Joe Miller's legal challenges cost the State of Alaska $268,000.

It looks like the costs for the state of Alaska to defend itself against the Joe Miller senate campaign challenges were approximately $268,000. An Anchorage Daily News story on the Alaska state budget overrun included this blurb:

Elections normally cost the Law Department no more than $200,000 annually, but this fiscal year, which began July 1, the cost of defending the state on election matters had exceeded $467,963 by Dec. 31.

Personally, this is the sort of thing that drives me crazy. As I've written before, even with Joe Miller's legal challenges, he would have still lost the Alaska Senate race by more than 2,000 votes, and then his insistence on these legal challenges just cost the state $268,000.

Where does that money come from? Alaska taxpayers.

Don't get me wrong here, this isn't an attack on Joe Miller, per se. I would be just as upset if Lisa Murkowski did something similar. It seems to me to be a problem with our legal system, where the State of Alaska should now be able to go back to the Joe Miller campaign -- which last I read had something like $300K or $500K -- to get that money back.

Here's a link to the ADN story where Governor Parnell wants an additional $160M from the State Legislature to cover "unexpected expenses", including these Joe Miller legal costs (which are actually treated as a very minor part of that story).