California Gavin Newsom has signed his full monthly salary despite asking state workers in May to take a pay cut to reduce the state’s burden in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.
Although elected officials are exempt from such pay cuts, Newsom promised that he would voluntarily slaughter his salary when he asked state workers to make the same sacrifice.
File: Secretary of State Gavin Newsom removes his face mask before giving an update on the state’s initiative to provide housing for homeless Californians amid the coronavirus pandemic, during a visit to Pittsburg, California in June.
(AP)
But a Sacramento Bee Thursday report found that Newsom continued to sign its full monthly salary of $ 17,479.
A spokesman for Newsom’s office accused the case of an ‘administrative error’.
“The governor announced his commitment to take the same pay cut as other state workers when he introduced his budget in May and the controller officially asked to change his pay, effective July 1,” he said. “The reductions for both July and August will be offset for the next payment period.”
Sacramento’s KOVR also reported that PlumpJack, a Northern California-based wine and hairdressing company founded and partly owned by Newsom, had opened by early July – well after Newsom ordered that all essentials be closed in March.
Data released by the U.S. Treasury Department also shows that the wine company also received a loan of $ 150,000 to $ 350,000 from the Paycheck Protection Program.
Data from the state inspector’s office shows that state inspector Betty Yee was the only one of the eight elected California officials in California who took a pay cut last month, The Bee reported.
CALIFORNIA GOV. NEWSOM ATTITS 367 WILDFIRES, 23 OF THE MAJOR, FOLLOWING BURNJE A STATEWIDE EMERGENCY
The indictment against Newsom is the latest episode in a series of misteps this summer that have thrown his administration in a less than favorable light. Earlier this month, Newsom’s handling of a recurrence of cases in the state was accused of a data error that caused a backlog of nearly 300,000 virus test results.
“The goat stops with me, I’m responsible,” he told a news conference, his first appearance since officials revealed the mistake. “Nobody’s trying to hide that, nobody’s trying to mask that. We’ve that property, we’re moving forward to address those issues.”
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His tone was markedly different than in March, when California’s public battle with the virus began and the state initially suffered the worst results. In commanding news conferences held almost daily, he announced the country’s first statewide stay-at-home order and won mostly support from the state’s 40 million residents.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
