And we all thought last legislative session was a bear. The one that looms ahead is going to be an even knottier challenge.

The budget for the current year was already pared back with deep cuts authorized by the administration and lawmakers. Now it must shrink further due to continuing declines in state tax projections by the Council on Revenues.

Gov. Linda Lingle's attempt to close a $1.2 billion deficit through June 2011 is achieved largely through some critical labor savings in new negotiated public-employee contracts.

But the new budget plan released last week also relies on some stopgap fixes — such as delaying payment of tax refunds and diverting the transient accommodations tax from county to state coffers. These make the state's books look better but also merely postpone some of the pain for later.

While this approach is understandable at this juncture, further steps must be taken to address the basic problem: The state needs to streamline services and find more inventive ways of financing them.

Legislators must join with Lingle in seeking new private-sector partnerships. While business is also hurting and can't afford wholesale underwriting of government services, officials can explore fiscal partnership in areas where there are shared goals or similar missions.

Taxpayers are struggling to pay bills, so they can't be thrilled to learn the state expects them to wait for tax refunds; many people already hold their breath for that check to arrive. And although county revenues diverted from the hotel-room tax may help paper over a current shortfall, taxpayers know they'll be ultimately forced to pick up that tab, when counties replace the lost revenues some other way.

What's needed is a collaborative approach to help government chart a survival course in these turbulent times. And if they are wise, officials will retain new efficiencies established in the government that emerges at the end of this economic crisis.