Here’s the thing that Musk and Newsom plans share when it comes to cutting government costs

Over one year before Elon Musk began rooting through federal agencies in the name of trimming government spending, Gov. Gavin Newsom had already taken steps to make California’s budget more efficient.

Instead of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency terminating public servants and canceling federal payments, Newsom’s administration directed agencies to find and cut nearly 8% from their budgets and eliminate thousands of vacant positions on the payroll.

But one thing DOGE’s efforts and Newsom’s efficiency have in common: a lack of transparency.

A recent analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found the governor’s effort to trim the state’s budget failed to meet reporting requirements. (A Washington, D.C. ethics watchdog group recently filed a federal lawsuit to force DOGE to comply with public record laws.)

The limited information Newsom’s administration has shared with the Legislature “makes it very difficult to assess the viability of the assumed savings and raises concerns that the administration will not be able to achieve the full level of savings assumed, especially in the current year,” the state analysts wrote.

The LAO noted that the administration did provide a high-level overview of the savings it hoped to achieve over two fiscal years in a two-page document. The summary included each department’s savings from reducing budget operations and eliminating vacant positions, but little more detail.

Missing from the administration was information about specific funding sources, affected programs and impacted job classifications, the LAO reported.

A spokesperson for the Finance Department said it planned to provide the Joint Legislative Budget Committee with specifics on the reductions and savings by early April.

The LAO was previously skeptical that departments would be able to achieve the roughly 8% savings target. The Finance Department’s revised goal of 2.4% percent savings from these efforts is more reasonable, the analysts said.

Additionally, the analysts said the amount departments were able to eliminate varied significantly from the roughly 8% target outlined by the administration. Some departments, such as the Department of Technology, didn’t identify any savings. While others, like the California Air Resources Board, met the savings target.

Additionally, the analysts said the amount departments were able to eliminate varied significantly from the roughly 8% target outlined by the administration. Some departments, such as the Department of Technology, didn’t identify any savings from the operations reductions section of the Finance Department’s public report. While others, like the California Air Resources Board, met the savings target. (The Department of Technology said 38 positions were eliminated from the agency’s Technology Services Revolving Fund, as part of the budget reductions. This reduced the department’s operating expenses related to personnel by $3.9 million.)

But due to the limited information, the LAO said it appears departments are still working to find ways to achieve savings, which makes “it difficult to assess whether any variation is connected to real, identified efficiencies.”

“Moreover, whether there would be impacts on services is unknown at this time,” the state analysts said.

Instead of eliminating 10,000 vacant jobs, the Finance Department said in January only 6,500 empty positions had been cut to avoid unwanted impact on state resources. Those eliminated positions are funded from predominantly non-General Fund sources, the LAO reported.

Given the lack of information shared with the state analysts, the LAO also recommended legislative committees ask individual agencies and the Finance Department for more granular information about any impacts on state workers.

The LAO recommended committees ask what state worker classifications have been impacted by the vacancy sweeps and why those positions were chosen.