Miami University paid out $272,000 for 630 phones in 2009-2010.
Wright State University spent $209,000 and Sinclair Community College paid $70,000, according to the schools. University officials note these sums are small portions of annual budgets that are hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Wright State allocates mobile communications devices to employees as their work requires an ability to communicate and receive data outside the office,” spokeswoman Stephanie Gottschlich said. “The university uses a multitude of plans from wireless providers to minimize expense, including shared as well as individual plans.”
David Williams, vice president of policy for Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington, D.C., said the questionable spending on phones reinforces the perception of government employees receiving too many perks.
“Do all these people need to have them and do they get the best bang for the buck?” Williams said of the colleges. “Self-examination never hurts in the private or public sector.”
Officials at Ohio State University, the state’s biggest school and the nation’s second largest, said they could not respond to a Dayton Daily News public records request asking how much it spent on the cell phones.
“Unfortunately, we do not have a central repository of how much we spend on smart phones since we operate in a decentralized environment and that data is held by the various work units in the colleges,” said Jim Lynch, director of media relations.
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