Gov. Deval Patrick appears to be starting to get it: Massachusetts taxpayers are tapped out.

Unfortunately, it is only a start.

Last week, the governor announced his plan to close an estimated $600 million gap in the state budget, just four months into the fiscal year.

He deserves credit for making no calls for broad-based tax increases, like the 25 percent hike in the sales tax that took effect Aug. 1. Instead, he said he is prepared to lay off up to 2,000 state workers, and order furloughs for about 4,000 managers in the executive branch — things that have been happening to those in the private sector for most of this decade.

He is pushing unions for contract concessions. He proposed eliminating two of the most infamous holidays — Bunker Hill Day and Evacuation Day — blatant examples of state employees living large while those who pay the bill suffer.

And, for the most part, Patrick is protecting education funds from cuts, although he eliminated $18 million from regional school busing, $5.2 million from charter school reimbursement and $32 million from the University of Massachusetts.

But there is still too little reform to accompany those cuts. The governor wants to use $62 million in federal stimulus money — money that is supposedly for promoting job growth in the private sector — to prop up government jobs.

Many of the announced cuts are from human services, while the anti-privatization Pacheco law that is a giveaway to unions and costs taxpayers hundreds of millions a year in inflated construction costs, remains untouched.

As Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei, R-Wakefield, noted, there were no calls for major reform like a state hiring freeze or a wage freeze that could cut costs and preserve services.

And there are other less overt efforts to squeeze more money out of struggling taxpayers. Patrick is seeking authority for cities and towns to install "red light cameras," to make it easier for communities to collect vast new sums of money for traffic violations. He is proposing new insurance charges to fund municipal police training.

Beyond that, while his fingerprints are not directly on it, he knows some legislators are now hard at work trying to find a way to remove the sales tax exemption for services — a prospect that could suck another $6 billion from taxpayers.

This is not the way to restore economic health, and tax revenue, to the state. The sales tax increase hasn't done it — September revenues were $37 million below expectations, even after the increase. While the national economy finally expanded during the third quarter, by 3.5 percent, it declined by 1.1 percent in Massachusetts. And unemployment continues to grow.

The governor, and the Legislature, have taken some commendable steps toward fiscal responsibility. But they are too few. State government needs more than simple cuts. It needs real reform.