SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Jerry Brown is hanging up his state-issued cellphone, and he has ordered half the state bureaucrats who have government-paid cellphones to do the same.
“It is difficult for me to believe that 40 percent of all state employees must be equipped with taxpayer-funded cellphones,” the new governor said Tuesday. “The current number of phones out there is astounding.”
Brown used his first executive order since taking office a week ago to instruct department heads to cut off 48,000 state-employee cellphones by June. That’s half of the 96,000 phones issued to state bureaucrats. Brown said in a statement that dialing back the number of phones will save $20 million a year as the state works to bridge a $25.4 billion budget gap over the next 18 months.
Brown told reporters he would turn in his own phone by day’s end.
The contracts each cost taxpayers an average of $36 a month, or $432 a year, according to the Department of Finance. Some phones may be under long-term contracts, Brown said, but the state can hang up on others more quickly.
