Gavin Newsom has grown California’s government to record size. Now he, too, is selling ‘efficiency’

By Alexei Koseff | CALmatters It’s not only Washington, D.C., where “efficiency” has become the buzzword du jour. With California facing an uncertain fiscal future, Gov. Gavin Newsom made his own pitch for a leaner state government last week as he previewed his annual budget proposal. Touting billions of dollars in savings from eliminating empty positions and scaling back spending on everything from travel to printing, the Democratic governor compared his efforts to the Department of Government Efficiency, the incoming Trump administration’s push to slash costs across the federal government. “We’re all taxpayers. We all want to make sure our money is being well invested, not wasted. We want more efficiency,” Newsom told reporters during a stop at the Stanislaus State campus in Turlock. “Our D.O.G.E. is spelled O.D.I.” he said, referring to the Office of Data and Innovation he created in 2019 to improve public services through technology. The concept isn’t entirely unfamiliar for Newsom, who has been interested in reinventing government since he served in San Francisco City Hall — and even once wrote a book about it. But his approach as governor has been nearly antithetical to D.O.G.E., which under the leadership of entrepreneurs Elon Musk and...