Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said last fall he intended to carry out his predecessor's plans to lay off thousands of state workers, said Friday he wants to review the details before any more lose their jobs.

One day after taking office in November, Schwarzenegger said he was waiting until early January to announce the layoffs because he didn't feel good about firing anyone over the holidays.

But administration officials said Friday that Cabinet secretaries balked at implementing former Gov. Gray Davis' layoff plan, calling it too disruptive. Schwarzenegger, they said, ordered a more careful accounting before deciding how many people to cut.

"There's already a law from the previous administration that 16,000 would be laid off," he said at his Friday press conference on the budget. "But we're not going to go and just take 16,000 out.

"We want to really, and I insist very much, go and look at all those positions to see if that has been done without a plan or if there is a plan. Because we want to make sure that the services that the state provides are great services for the people because the people deserve that."

The 16,000 number Schwarzenegger referred to was tied to a Davis budget requirement that $1.1 billion be cut from the current fiscal year as part of his effort to balance the books.

About 12,000 state workers got pink slips notifying them they could be fired within 120 days, but by late last year only 500 had actually lost their jobs.

Just as Davis was leaving office, officials in his administration said the actual number of layoffs necessary was reduced to 2,000 through concessions from some state labor unions, retirements and other savings.

The 140,000-member California State Employees Association, for instance, by far the state's biggest public employee union, agreed to have its members take one day off a month without pay to save jobs.

"My heart went pitter-patter when I heard the 16,000 number," said J.J. Jelincic, the union's president. "But when I figured out what he probably meant, my blood pressure went back to normal."

It's not clear exactly how many layoffs the new administration will implement, however. H.D. Palmer, a Schwarzenegger budget spokesman, said the Republican governor inherited layoff plans from Davis that called for 9,300 firings.

"I don't know where the 2,000 figure comes from," Palmer said. "The universe I'm looking at is 9,300."

What was clear, Finance Director Donna Arduin said in an interview Friday, is that the administration remains committed to the $1.1 billion in personnel costs cut by Davis. It is far from certain, however, exactly how Schwarzenegger will get there.

"We want to make sure that people aren't laid off that we really need," Schwarzenegger said. "So we're looking at that very carefully. But that was already done. That was already the law in the previous administration."

Palmer said the review ordered by Schwarzenegger will take place "in the coming weeks and months. I don't want to put a premature deadline on it, but it's not something we're going to wait until the last minute to do."

He said he couldn't predict how many workers would ultimately lose their jobs as Schwarzenegger works to close a budget deficit this fiscal year and next. But Palmer also noted that some progress toward the overall savings goal is already being realized through a hiring freeze.

"What we're talking about here," Palmer said, "is taking a scalpel approach rather than an ax. We want to disrupt as few vital state services as possible."

Jelincic, the CSEA president, said he has no doubt there will be layoffs. But he said he'd be surprised if the number tops 2,000.

"He's proposing some deep cuts, and when you cut programs that deep, you get down to employees," Jelincic said. "But I don't expect it to be as bad as we once feared."

Although he said he feels good about that piece of budget news -- despite the scare he got from Schwarzenegger earlier in the day -- Jelincic had plenty of criticism of the governor's proposed budget.

"This budget fails the people of California by drastically cutting the essential services we all rely on," he said in a statement issued by the union.

Schwarzenegger's proposed budget also calls for the state to return to a two-tiered pension system, with new hires getting less-lucrative retirement benefits.

And the proposal calls for state employees' contribution to their retirement funds to increase by a percentage point, in most cases from 5 percent to 6 percent of gross annual pay. That provision, however, would be subject to contract negotiations between state employee unions and the administration.

"We oppose a two-tiered pension system," Jelincic said in the statement. "California tried it under Gov. (Pete) Wilson and it failed because it's unfair, creating inequities and a divisive environment in the workplace. ... We will work to protect that pension system."