Gov. Gavin Newsom last week played Santa Claus, promising bigger government subsidies to Hollywood’s film and video industry and giving cities and counties a new tranche of state aid to combat homelessness.

The quantities are the same, but the recipients couldn’t be more different; $750 million to improve the balance sheets of several already wealthy entertainment producers, and $827 million to help an estimated 186,000 homeless people gain shelter. The governor’s attitudes toward those who benefit from political largesse, as expressed at closely held news conferences in Los Angeles, are also quite different.

Newsom called the increase in recreation subsidies from $330 million to $750 million a year “investing in the future of this industry and this state,” but he devoted much of his homelessness announcement to warning local officials that they must and will do better. We are facing new performance standards.

“We have given our local partners the tools and resources they need,” Newsom said in a statement. “It is time to end this crisis. “These new funds represent the hard work, accountability and strategic planning needed to address homelessness with real, long-lasting results.”

“As a condition of receiving funding, awardees must agree to increased accountability, transparency and compliance measures,” the governor’s office said. These new measures will help improve the ability of these government investments to deliver real, measurable results and will help improve data and monitoring of results. “This keeps grantees accountable and protects state finances.”

Over the past four years, the state has allocated $2.4 billion in aid to local governments for homelessness programs, and Newsom has periodically threatened to withhold more funding, saying recipients aren’t spending the money effectively.

But taking money one year at a time, without a commitment to long-term funding, makes it difficult to create permanent programs to help homeless people find shelter and deal with the problems that made them homeless in the first place, local officials said.

It is also notable that state comptroller Grant Parks condemned Newsom’s Interagency Council on Homelessness for failing to oversee anti-homelessness programs as established. Until the council does its job, “the state will not have up-to-date information it can use to make data-driven policy decisions on how to effectively reduce homelessness,” Parks said in a report released last April, just before Newsom and Newsom. The legislature has held its annual battle over homelessness spending in the state budget.

As the number of homeless people continues to rise, the fight between Newsom and local officials appears to be less about how to attack the crisis and more about who is to blame for the failure.