Joe Miller, Randy Ruedrich and Sarah Palin

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An Alaska judge has ordered the Fairbanks North Star Borough to release personnel records of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller.

Retired Superior Court Judge Winston Burbank made the ruling Saturday afternoon. The decision comes after Alaska Dispatch filed a lawsuit for the release of Miller's records at the borough. Other media organizations later joined the suit.

But the records won't be released until at least Tuesday afternoon. Burbank has given Miller until then to decide whether to appeal the decision to the Alaska Supreme Court.

"Individuals who run for office expect that their past will be researched and revealed, and therefore, lose their previously held expectations of privacy," Burbank said.

Miller, a Republican, has been questioned about his 2009 departure from the Fairbanks North Star Borough since late June. Alaska Dispatch was the first to report that Miller had wrongly used borough computers in a failed attempt to oust the head of the Alaska Republican Party, Randy Ruedrich.

In an interview with CNN on Monday, Miller admitted he was disciplined in 2008 for misusing computers during his work at the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

In the CNN interview, Miller admitted he was disciplined for misusing borough computers but called it "petty" and added "it was during my lunch hour."

One day before Miller's admission on national television, Tony Hopfinger, the co-founder and editor of Alaska Dispatch, was handcuffed by Miller's private security detail at an Anchorage town hall meeting Oct. 17 after he tried to question Miller about whether he had been politicking on borough time.

The Dispatch has sought the release of records pertaining to two distinct issues: Miller's violation of the borough's ethics policy in March 2008 and the circumstances leading up to his departure from the borough in September 2009. Details of Miller's use of colleagues' computers to try to oust Ruedrich -- the head of the Alaska GOP -- in March 2008 remain sketchy, as does what consequences Miller suffered as a result of getting caught.

At the Alaska Republican Party's annual convention in March of 2008, Miller and the state's newly installed governor, Sarah Palin, tried but failed to get rid of party chair Ruedrich. Palin, a onetime AOGCC commissioner, exposed Ruedrich's ethical lapses in conducting Republican business out of his office at work and then used her reputation as a corruption fighter to bootstrap her way into the governor's office.

For Miller, he could have been fired for using employees' computers for political business, but his job was spared because his legal expertise was too valuable to a case involving the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, said former borough mayor Jim Whitaker. Whitaker came forward after Miller repeatedly refused to publicly discuss the circumstances of the incident. Questions also remain about whether Miller was close to being forced out or fired had he not chosen to leave voluntarily in 2009; Whitaker has stated the borough was about to dismiss Miller.