It’s difficult to get a comprehensive picture of how Newsom’s priorities have enlarged state government.
His Finance Department was unable to answer questions about whether several of his biggest and most expensive initiatives added new positions to the state payroll, including CalAIM, a first-of-its-kind overhaul of medical care for low-income patients; Homekey, which funds the conversion of hotels and motels into homeless housing; the trash pickup program Clean California; and CARE Court, a system to push people with mental illness off the streets and into treatment.
The increase in the workforce is also driven by laws predating Newsom, including a gas tax hike that has funded thousands of new jobs to repair California’s roads.
Conversely, the governor has shrunk some parts of the state government, such as by closing several prisons.
But the overall trend is up. There are 436,435 government positions in the state budget that Newsom just proposed, including at the public university systems, according to the Finance Department (PDF), or about 11.1 state employees per 1,000 Californians. That number has increased from 9.5 before Newsom took office — and is a record high going back to at least 1970, when the Finance Department’s tracking begins.
His office did not respond to a question about how efficiency fits into Newsom’s governing philosophy. But a spokesperson provided a list of initiatives from the Office of Data and Innovation “that are building efficiencies across state departments,” including new tools to forecast community water systems at risk of running dry, evaluate housing projects for streamlined approval, and enhance public participation in the permitting process for toxic substance storage.
State Sen. Suzette Valladares, a Lancaster Republican, told CalMatters that it was “laughable” for Newsom to claim California has been a leader in government efficiency.
“It’s scary to think that he thinks we’re doing good,” she said. “From my perspective, instead of taking shots at the D.O.G.E., he should be taking notes.”
She pointed to the underfunded high-speed rail project and homelessness services as bloated spending by Newsom. Republicans have been highly critical that California’s homeless population continues to increase, despite the governor dedicating tens of billions of dollars in additional money to the problem.
“He’s been at the helm of this mess, yet he has the audacity to mock the federal government’s efforts to cut waste,” Valladares said.
Now the trajectory appears to be shifting course. With growing budget deficits projected in the coming years, Newsom has been forced to tighten California’s belt.
His administration has identified about 6,500 vacant positions that it plans to eliminate and imposed a nearly 8% cut to state operations, which it projects will collectively save almost $5 billion.
“We also have an imperative and that is to meet you where you want us to be,” Newsom said at his budget preview event in Turlock. “That’s leaner, just like you have been in your household. Just like I’ve been in mine. We all have to be more efficient.”
He’s not the first California governor to take this stance — and those previous experiences suggest how difficult it could be to go further, if Newsom wants to. His office did not respond to a question about whether the governor is planning further cuts to the size of state government.
In 2004, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, commissioned the California Performance Review to overhaul state bureaucracy. The 2,500-page report recommended more than 1,000 steps to shrink the state government and save billions of dollars annually, including consolidating departments and agencies, eliminating 118 boards and commissions, and cutting 12,000 jobs.
Joanne Kozberg, a veteran of a similar “reinventing government” effort under another previous Republican governor, Pete Wilson, co-chaired the California Performance Review. She told CalMatters that, based on feedback to the report, she suggested focusing their work on just 11 main initiatives, but the Schwarzenegger administration wanted to “go big and bold.” Instead, up against tremendous resistance from Democrats to such sweeping changes, Schwarzenegger dropped his plan and moved onto other priorities.
“Here’s the trouble you run into: How do you implement? Every program has a constituent,” Kozberg said. “It takes a coalition of the enthusiastic. Because nobody really wants to give up their authority.”
Kozberg said that, to succeed, you need not just a leader who is devoted to achieving more efficiency, but also champions inside of government.
“It isn’t sexy. It takes knowledge of government,” she said. “You could do it and you should do it, but it’s going to take a lot of tenacity.”
Eight years later, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown did push through a reorganization and consolidation plan to “make government more efficient,” aided by a political environment in which an economic recession and steep budget deficits were the prevailing concern. It included eliminating 20 departments, offices and boards, merging the state’s personnel agencies and slashing funding for employee travel and cell phones.
Bosler, who served under Brown before working for Newsom, said some of what California governors have done in the name of efficiency is to demonstrate their values to the public — and some of it is just for show. But it’s difficult to eliminate more than a minor part of state government, she said, because the vast majority of money in the budget pays for services, which are much harder to take away from people.
“Government is not the bastion of efficiency. It’s just not what the incentives are,” she said.
Bosler expressed trepidation about Newsom’s latest approach, demanding an across-the-board 7.95% spending cut for every agency and department. Though it’s easier and appears value neutral, she said, that’s not the effect that it ultimately has on Californians.
“There isn’t a real evaluation of whether this is making government better,” Bosler said. “I worry about all the things that are not going to get done.”