California is getting a bad rap from businesses and the national media, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, and he’s getting mighty tired of it.

“Every year, the (business) executive magazines come out and say, ‘California is the worst place to do business, No. 50 in the nation,’” the governor told The Chronicle’s editorial board Friday. “They say the best places are Tennessee and Texas ... but if it’s all about (gross domestic product), we outperform everyone.”

California “is still the envy of the world,” Newsom said.

He talked about a recent national TV interview he did where the first question was about feces on the streets of San Francisco.

“With this sort of bashing, you get defensive about your old city and the state,” said Newsom, San Francisco’s former mayor. “I love this state and I’m going to fight for it.”

The governor had harsh words for business owners who complain about the state’s high taxes while making record profits.

“Some of the CEOs have never done better in their lifetime,” Newsom said. “They made all their money here and then move to Arizona before their IPO.”

There’s a cost to doing business in California, but there’s a good reason for that, he said.

“We’re not going to get rid of clean air, clean water; we’re not going to abandon our poor people,” Newsom said. “We’re not that state.”

Speaking earlier at a downtown economic summit on the Bay Area and Asia, the governor touched on those same issues to a crowd of business executives.

“We’re not going to be the cheapest place to do business, but you knew that 50 years ago,” Newsom said. While the state has problems, “we’re making progress, and I hope you’ll start focusing on that rather than the 13.3% damn tax rate.”

Much of that progress can be seen in next year’s budget, which Newsom will sign by the end of the month.

The budget, Newsom’s first as governor, eliminates the last of the debt that Gov. Jerry Brown inherited in 2011, uses general fund money to pay off billions in pension liabilities and gets rid of gimmicks that previous governors used to disguise deficits, like delaying the state’s last payday of the year by a day to push it into the next year’s budget.

The budget also takes major steps toward dealing with the growing problems of homelessness and housing costs, Newsom told The Chronicle.

Newsom scoffed at suggestions that he isn’t doing enough to address the housing crisis, pointing to $1.75 billion in the budget to assist local governments.

There’s $250 million to help cities and counties with the costs of preparing property for housing development, the governor noted, and another $500 million to help pay for the infrastructure needed for new housing — sewers, utility hookups, sidewalks and lighting.

And there’s a stick to go along with the promised carrot of financial assistance.

“Ask Huntington Beach” about how serious I am about housing, Newsom said. In January, California sued the Orange County city for refusing to meet the state’s requirement to provide low-income housing.

“There were 46 other cities out of compliance” with the low-income housing rule, Newsom said, but after he met with them, “half are now in compliance or moving toward it.”

That ability to bring the major players together to work on the state’s most important issues is one of the biggest perks of being the governor, Newsom said.

He also quietly suggested that Brown, the former governor, was responsible for many of the problems the state faces today.

“There wasn’t a lot of energy in the administration” when it came to dealing with housing, he said. Newsom added that he is working to revise the California Environmental Quality Act to make it easier to build housing, something the previous administration “took eight years to get nowhere on.”

Newsom, 51, told the business executives at the downtown economic event that they should “know there’s new energy and vigor” in the governor’s office, a none-too-subtle contrast to Brown, who was 80 when he left office.

But that “energy and vigor” doesn’t mean California’s problems will be solved, at least not in a hurry. Despite what has been accomplished this year, there is still plenty left to be done, the governor said.

“There are certain things I can control and some things I cannot,” Newsom said. “One (legislative) session is not four years.”

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth