California’s emergency telephone service has become another victim of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s dismal leadership.
After seven years and nearly $500 million spent, California’s 911 emergency system overhaul is a failure, as Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, reported.
“During his first year in office, the governor confidently projected that he would replace the state’s emergency call system within three years, a goal that officials previously estimated would cost $132 million. But nearly seven years later, the state has spent more than $450 million on a regionalized ‘Next Generation’ digital system that suffered such appalling failures and disruptions during its initial rollout that the Newsom administration scrapped it entirely,” Rufo noted in a City-Journal report.
“Gavin Newsom promised to deliver a brand new 911 system within 3 years for $132 million. Now it is 7 years later, almost $500 million has been spent, and the system they rolled out was such a disaster, they’ve scrapped it.” pic.twitter.com/KmmdPZxe7q
— Christopher F. Rufo
(@christopherrufo) April 30, 2026
“Could you imagine making the scariest phone call of your life and thinking no one is coming?” a whistleblower said, according to the report.
“After a series of warnings and delays, in November 2025, the Newsom administration officially terminated the regional approach. In a postmortem report, Cal OES indicated that the regional rollout overwhelmed dispatch centers and was ultimately too fragile and risky to work,” the report continued.
And while Newsom and others play the blame game over who is responsible for the disastrous rollout, California is “stuck with a 1970s-era emergency call system that is falling apart.”
The report offered examples of incidents where 911 calls failed to go through or took too long, with one incident in Desert Hot Springs where emergency services allegedly arrived too late to save the caller’s stepfather.
“For now, Cal OES plans to start from scratch and pursue a statewide, rather than regional, approach, estimating that the new system will take until 2030 to complete. Incredibly, Governor Newsom has encouraged all the current vendors who oversaw the failed system to compete for a bid on the new statewide system, and Cal OES has already decided to extend an interim contract to one, Atos, through 2026—shelling out additional cash to the provider who has already failed to deliver once,” Rufo reported.
“Is there anything in California that Gavin hasn’t destroyed?” social media users wondered.
This was a boondoggle designed to fail. Pour millions of dollars down a black hole that coincidentally happened to enrich the right people, then pull the plug citing an unworkable format. California has perfected the art of grift.
— ATX MAN TX (@ATXMANATX) April 30, 2026
But no doubt a lot of ”independent contractors“ and corrupt cronies did well.
Newsom runs his own California mafia.— MonaKnows (@MonaKnows2) April 30, 2026
It’s just money laundering.
Money laundering does not produce. That’s the whole point.
— Ron Herrera (@RonJHerrera) April 30, 2026
— Magamind (@McRick4Now) April 30, 2026
