Husband of Alaska Governor Refuses to Testify in Legislature's Trooper Inquiry ANCHORAGE - Todd Palin, the husband of the Republican nominee for vice president, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, has refused to testify in a legislative inquiry into whether Ms. Palin or members of her administration abused their power in the dismissal of a top state administrator, a spokesman said Thursday. Mr. Palin, one of 13 people served with subpoenas in the inquiry, is a close adviser to his wife and is at the center of the controversy over the firing in July of Walt Monegan, then the public safety commissioner. Ed O'Callaghan, a spokesman for the McCain-Palin campaign here, said that Mr. Palin would not testify and that he had filed "objections to the validity of the subpoena" with the independent investigator leading the inquiry for the Legislature, Stephen E. Branchflower, a former Anchorage prosecutor. The Palins have long denied wrongdoing, and the governor initially said she would cooperate with the bipartisan legislative inquiry. Now that she is Senator John McCain's running mate, however, the campaign says the inquiry has become a partisan political circus. It has accused Democratic lawmakers of using it to hurt the Republican ticket. The campaign has dispatched lawyers, including Mr. O'Callaghan, a former senior official at the Justice Department, to Alaska to advise the Palins" lawyers. Five state Republican lawmakers have also filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the inquiry. Mr. Palin's refusal to testify came after several days in which it seemed increasingly unlikely that the Palins or members of Ms. Palin's administration would cooperate with the inquiry. Mr. Monegan has said he believes he was fired because the Palins were frustrated that he did not fire a state trooper who had gone through a difficult divorce with Ms. Palin's sister. The governor and Mr. Palin have said the trooper, Mike Wooten, threatened their family, drove his patrol car after drinking and committed other offenses. The governor and Mr. Palin each expressed frustration to Mr. Monegan, through e-mail and in person, saying Trooper Wooten had not been sufficiently disciplined. At one point, Mr. Monegan has said, Mr. Palin showed him information about Trooper Wooten that Mr. Palin said the family had gathered by hiring a private investigator. Mr. Monegan was quoted in The Anchorage Daily News last month as saying that neither of the Palins had explicitly told him to fire Trooper Wooten but that their contact with him was intended to pressure him to do so. Some Democrats have accused the McCain-Palin campaign of deliberately delaying the inquiry to prevent it from being resolved until after Election Day, a contention Mr. O'Callaghan rejected. The inquiry's report is to be delivered to a special legislative committee by Oct. 10. "The governor is not trying to put off the investigation until after the election," Mr. O'Callaghan said. She wants to cooperate with a fair and impartial investigation. The legislative panel's investigation is not that. John Harris, a Republican who is speaker of the Alaska House, said Thursday that he hoped the legislative inquiry would proceed on schedule. He also repeated his concerns that Democrats and Republicans both had injected new partisanship into the inquiry. "The governor got selected as the vice-presidential nominee and everything kind of took on a different look," Mr. Harris said. He said he hoped the inquiry could still be free of partisanship but added, "it may not be possible now."