Eleven years ago, Hawaii was plunging into financial desperation.

“Hawaii’s money troubles are creating a society more befitting a tropical backwater than a state celebrating its 50th anniversary,” read an Associated Press report from December 2009.

As the money stopped coming in because of the Great Recession, Republican Gov. Linda Lingle fashioned a response that, according to the Associated Press, would “reduce what are generally considered to be core functions: education, public health, elections and services for the disadvantaged.”

Back then Hawaii was looking at a $1 billion budget deficit through June 2011.

“Government is not going to be able to provide the array of services at the level that we used to, because we have billions of dollars less,” Lingle warned.

Last week, as Democratic Gov. David Ige faced the current crisis, the numbers have changed — profoundly.

Ige said the state is now projecting a $1.4 billion budget shortfall in the general fund for each of the next four years and is calling for state workers to be furloughed two days a month.

When Lingle ordered furloughs that closed public schools on Fridays, parents reacted by staging a sit-in in Lingle’s state Capitol office. With some obvious frustration, Lingle had the parents arrested. That marked the end of Lingle’s term in office and probably doomed what was left of her political career.

The Great Recession budget cutback caused state services to just stop. When Gov. Neil Abercrombie followed Lingle into office, he found a bureaucracy in shambles because so many jobs were left undone.

For instance, there was just one inspector left working in the field on Oahu testing the accuracy of thousands of gas pumps, supermarket check-out scanners and taxi meters.

Lingle dissolved mental health budgets.The Health Department lost a total of 319 positions and was forced to cut funding to dozens of nonprofit services providers.

The Waianae Coast Community Mental Health Center was forced to lay off 80 of its 150 employees.

Asked to compare those budgets then with the crisis Ige faces now, Abercrombie said: “Hawaii is facing its most challenging time, ever.”

“The difference is that when I was dealing with it, the economy was in good shape, tourism was back. We had the tax revenue to pay the principal and interest on the borrowed money.

“I look at the bond sales David is going through and the delays in the medical insurance payments, the state credit rating is going to plunge,” Abercrombie said in an interview last week.

Abercrombie, who said he and all of Hawaii’s living governors have been talking to and advising Ige, is urging the administration to prepare for bad times.

“David is facing times that are infinitely worse than anything we faced. Revenues from taxes have disappeared, people are out of work and nobody is coming here.”

Looking at the future for the state, Abercrombie said, “We are facing mass layoffs. Linda and I had to face layoffs, but nowhere remotely to the same degree.”

The result, Abercrombie predicted, is the state will have to change how public workers are employed. “There will need to be much more emphasis on early retirement.”

The next step will be up to the public unions, who vigorously protested Ige’s announcement of furloughs. Now, however, they must realize a collapsed, bankrupt local economy will hurt everyone. While representing their members, public worker unions will have to decide if they want to help save Hawaii’s economy.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.