Just when you thought it was safe to close your checkbook, wait. What goes around, comes around. So get ready to be smacked by the government budget crisis all over again.

This time, it is the four counties pleading poverty. The counties will have less money this year than they did last year.

The problems are two-fold. First counties get money by taxing the value of property.

If the value of your property goes up, you owe the county more; if the value goes down, well, if you are lucky, the tax bill stays the same. And the state is planning to take away the counties' tax money.

The counties' pending woes are a long time coming. Gov. Linda Lingle predicted it last year, noting that when she was mayor of Maui, the counties always got socked a year after the state was hit with bad revenue projections.

Already last year Big Island Mayor Billy Kenoi noted that his county was taking in $12.3 million less than in 2008 and he said “;it will have a big impact.”; While the Big Island hasn't run the numbers on this year's drop, this well is expected to get deeper.

Maui County has done the math and Mayor Charmaine Tavares can only say the news isn't good.

“;We are at a point where we face severe reductions in income from all sources that pay for our county services and programs,”; Tavares told the Maui County Council last week.

Last year Lingle advised the counties to get on board with furloughs, but the mayors, led by Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, rebuffed the idea of layoffs and furloughs, saying they weren't needed yet. But the fumes that were in the tank last year evaporated and now the counties are running on empty.

Still Tavares said she would not accept furloughs or layoffs for Maui, saying it leads to a “;dysfunctional”; state. The state, Tavares notes, could add to that dysfunction by grabbing the hotel room tax from the counties, which she estimates would add $20 million to her projected $50 million deficit.

But that is exactly how Lingle plans to balance the budget. If the Legislature doesn't agree to the hotel tax raid, the state is an additional $100 million in the red.

So something is going to be cut, someone else is going to get furloughed or laid off.

Or, as Tavares says: “;If the community expects business and services as usual, revenues have to be raised.”;

And that, gentle readers, is why you are called “;taxpayers.”;

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Richard Borreca writes on politics every Wednesday. Reach him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).