Nope, It's Not A Jet Or A Turboprop -- It's A Cessna 182

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has become the latest state official to shave budget costs by deciding to sell a state-owned aircraft, but don't expect another Citation or even a King Air to hit the selling block as a result.

Residing in a hangar in Norwood Memorial Airport, the plane is a Cessna 182, purchased by the Massachusetts Aeronautics Commission in 1974 for $22,000.

According to the Boston Globe report, "Patrick did not even mention the aircraft sale publicly; he's never ridden in it, according to state officials; and few in the state were aware it existed."

Klark Jessen, spokesman for MA state transportation secretary Bernard Cohen, said at one time the plane was used to travel to small airports for inspections, and may even have been used to transport more prominent public officials in years past on an emergency basis.

"It was never, for example, assigned to a particular elected official," he said. "It has been used very little in recent years," adding that the last logged hours were a year ago, when airport inspector Richard Bunker flew the plane for three hours to make sure it was still running.

Jessen was unsure what the plane might be worth on the open market, but said the sale of the Cessna is expected to save taxpayers $27,750 per year in maintenance and storage fees.

Faced with a budget deficit of $1.4 billion, Patrick announced $1 billion in budget reductions last week, and the sale was one of the smaller moves to save the state some money. Patrick's spokesman, Kyle Sullivan, said the governor's number-crunchers only found out about the plane recently, from Cohen's office.

"The governor asked all his Cabinet secretaries to dig deep and scrub every area of their budgets to find cost savings and efficiencies," Sullivan said. "When the existence of this plane was brought to our attention, this decision was quick and simple: Sell it."

FMI: www.mass.gov