Erie County Executive Chris Collins says he'll save taxpayers nearly $150,000 a year by eliminating unnecessary county-issued cell phones.

After reviewing which employees needed phones most, Collins announced Tuesday morning that he had eliminated 36 percent of the county's cell phones.

"We had folks who had a cell phone who were using them 30 minutes or less a month," Collins explained. "They wanted the comfort of having that with them, but they weren't using it."

Collins said he can ensure employees feel safe on the roads by providing each department with a pool of cell phones to be checked-out on an as-need basis.

The county's Department of Social Services lost the largest number of phones at 82; but with 208 still in service, it continues to have more than any other department.

Collins said that's because most DSS workers travel frequently and are sometimes put in dangerous situations.

"Child Protective Services--those folks are out all day long--going into environment's where you've got to have communication," Collins said.

While Erie County Comptroller Mark Poloncarz supports Collins latest cost-saving move, he said the savings estimate may be inflated. Poloncarz says $45,500 relies on the elimination of pagers and pager pay. That's a perk in the union contracts that allows employees to be compensated for the inconvenience of carrying a pager.

"I would much rather see this negotiated out of a contract rather than a unilateral action in which the county might have to try to defend itself," Poloncarz said.

He said the union interprets pager pay as an inconvenience for being on stand-by and that replacing an employee's pager with a cell phone does not eliminate that inconvenience.

"If we don't even include the pager pay, the most we're talking about saving is $88,000 a year--which is good, but it's not $150,000 related solely to cell phones and Blackberrys," Poloncarz said.

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