CORRECTED - L.A. county paying for 8,000 abandoned phone lines

(Corrects supervisor's name)

LOS ANGELES, June 19 (Reuters) - Auditors poring over Los Angeles County's books to reduce a deep budget deficit have found 8,000 abandoned or unused phone lines costing taxpayers $1.5 million a year, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday.

The discovery includes some phone lines that may never have served any legitimate government purpose, like one registered to a now-defunct ticket brokerage in Hollywood that the county has paid for 14 years.

"This is government at its worst," County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told the Times. "We have a problem, no doubt about it. But we are going to move quickly to fix it."

Because the auditors are only about halfway through their review, they predict that they may ultimately discover some 16,000 abandoned lines, with an annual cost to taxpayers of about $3 million in phone bills, the paper reported.

Los Angeles County faces a gaping budget hole that has officials contemplating worker layoffs and cuts in services, and department heads have been asked to cut their expenses by as much as 13 percent. (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb, editing by Anthony Boadle)