The news, the news. Let's see if we can connect the dots:

• The state Department of Land and Natural Development proposes to increase user fees for harbors and other recreational facilities.

• State lawmakers are pestering to use $35 million in federal stimulus money to reduce the number of teacher furlough days.

• The Board of Education has floated a proposal to just about double fees charged to use public school buses.

The state is facing serious budget problems and things are not getting better. In fact, tax collections are running seriously behind what were already sober forecasts for the coming year.

Then how to make sense of another story that says the state retirement system has rebounded nicely after several periods of losing quarters?

The link in all this news is that while the economy is recovering, and companies are again making money, the lot of many individuals — the folks who actually work in these companies and pay their taxes — has not improved measurably.

Part of this is understandable. Companies in crisis tend to lay off people and cut costs wherever they can. When conditions improve, they look first to firming up the bottom line before rehiring people or expanding.

That's why you can have general economic improvement while continuing to show double-digit employment numbers and, of course, a downturn in the taxes people pay.

So what to do? Most officials are loath to raise general taxes, because it sucks cash out of the economy. But there is need for money. So the answer is to focus on things that people with money want badly enough to pay a surcharge for, or that they need badly enough that they will pay whatever the traffic will bear.

In short, recreational fees, bus fares for kids on their way to school and a focus on bonus federal money that might otherwise sink into a fiscal hole.

This is seat-of-the-pants management of the state's budget. If, as citizens, we believe that offering harbors, parks, hiking trails and the like are important to us as a community, then we should be willing to pay for it. All of us. Same for school bus fares.

The economy will get better. But waiting for that to happen and tinkering around the edges in the meantime hardly adds up to comprehensive leadership. Rather than burrowing down and waiting for the inevitable turnaround, this is a time to think about what we want as a society and how we are going to pay for it.