The Victorian Ombudsman says it needs more money to continue investigating matters in the public interest.

Ombudsman Deborah Glass says her office went into a $5 million deficit last year, and that the recent State Budget allocation falls about $2 million short of the $21 million spent last year.

“I don't want to be one of those grumpy agency heads always bleating about their funding and I'm very conscious that the ombudsman will almost never be funded to do everything they want to do,” Ms Glass said.

“But I'm talking about the funding I need to do the job asked of me by Parliament, which I think is what people expect.”

From January next year, the ombudsman will have new powers and functions including educating the community and conciliating disputes. Because of this, it is anticipating a rise in its workload.

Ms Glass says she does not necessarily believe that the Government decided not to give the ombudsman its requested budget was an effort to avoid closer scrutiny.

“But the appearance of it is really poor and it does absolutely risk looking like attempting to undermine me,” she said.

Premier Daniel Andrews says his Government is not attempting to weaken the ombudsman.

“I'll leave perceptions to others, I'm much more about reality and the reality of this matter is those claims, that rhetoric, that commentary has no basis in fact whatsoever. I don't know that I can be any clearer than that,” he said.

“I think everybody who bids for the budget would say that their circumstances were unique, that they were important, that they were valued and that they needed to be funded.

“And the way budgets work is, very few if any full funding is provided, that's the nature of budgets, you have to make difficult decisions.”

Ms Glass said funding is “always” the lever governments use to control integrity agencies.

“When that is cut, that has an impact and it has a serious impact I think on, fundamentally, our ability to investigate the accountability of government and to address integrity the way I think the public would expect us to,” she said.