After Bee investigation, Gavin Newsom ends long-distance commuting deals for state executives

California government stopped paying for officials to commute across the state last year after The Sacramento Bee reported on a department director’s regular travel between Sacramento and San Diego, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office told The Bee this week.

The change affects a handful of officials who had long-distance commuting agreements under former Gov. Jerry Brown, according to Newsom’s office.

The Bee reported in June that taxpayers paid more than $21,000 for former Caltrans director Laurie Berman to commute to Sacramento from San Diego for a year.

The state paid for Berman’s flights and most of the rent for a Sacramento apartment, along with thousands of dollars more in Lyft rides, rental cars and meals. Berman retired in June.

The Newsom administration looked into similar arrangements for other state officials and canceled those they found, said Newsom spokesman Jesse Melgar.

Newsom’s office informed state secretaries, undersecretaries and other officials that they must pay for their own travel if they choose to live somewhere other than where they work, according to the governor’s office.

The Sacramento Bee submitted a California Public Records Act request seeking the agreements and the administration’s new policy, but the governor’s office said it did not have any records responsive to the request.

“In early 2019, we discovered that some personnel had arrangements with the previous administration to pay for commuting,” Melgar said in a statement. “The Newsom administration put in place policy that forbids these arrangements and worked with impacted individuals to come in line with this policy. Today, no agency officials are being compensated for commuting.”

Some senior-ranking officials in the Newsom administration live far from Sacramento, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly, who lives in South Pasadena. They commute at their own expense, according to the governor’s office.

The state had been reimbursing fewer than a dozen officials for spending on travel between their homes and offices under the old agreements, according to Newsom’s office.

Brown appointed Berman as Caltrans director in February 2018. Before that, she was the department’s chief deputy director and was based in San Diego.

Her successor in the San Diego office, Ryan Chamberlain, also billed the state for regular Sacramento travel. Chamberlain received about $20,000 for flights to and from the capital from March 2018 through March 2019 and was reimbursed about $3,000 in car rentals.

State policy generally forbids departments from paying for employee travel that is not directly work-related, with some exceptions.

A May 2019 state auditor’s report detailed about $90,000 in state spending on commutes for two midlevel administrators, one from Caltrans and one from the Department of State Hospitals. The report called the spending “wasteful.”

Before her promotion, Berman worked in San Diego and spent most of her time there. She remained officially stationed there after her promotion to director, even though most of her duties moved to Sacramento.

Newsom’s administration changed reimbursement policies to clarify that workers should be headquartered where they do most of their work, according to the administration.