After the defeat, last month, of a proposal to create a county manager for Cayuga County, it can be expected that at Tuesday's meeting of the Cayuga County Legislature, just two weeks before Election Day, that there will be some political gamesmanship and grandstanding. Voters should be very leery of anything that comes out of Tuesday night's meeting.

With five incumbents up for re-election with competitive races, there might be a last ditch attempt to bring something to the floor to change the way the county does business. It may be brought from several different quarters with several different rationales. None may be in the best interest of the public.

There might be a legislator or two who wants to show that despite their past actions or votes, they want “real reform” and they will try to put something on the floor. They will know that it has not chance of passing, but it may give them some good press or, at the very least, something they can tout in campaign literature, letters to the editor or press releases that shows them as a “reformer.”

There may also be a move from some who support the opponents of these incumbents to try to back them into a corner with an “up or down” vote on something to get them on record to try to embarrass them before Election Day. There may even be a move from those who think that the last chance for reform in the short term is at this meeting, rather than in the unclear future, that will see a change in the makeup of the Legislature.

Voters need to be suspicious of any promises of reform, referendums or any change. If anything, the public needs to keep in mind that the window for reform this year has, sadly, passed. There needs to be a temporary ban on the introduction of new or revamped proposals.

The Legislature needs to now shift its attention to other matters, most importantly the one issue that seems to have fallen off the media and public's radar screen - the 2006 county budget. In an odd twist, with past budgets with major tax increases feeding the fire for reform, next year's budget seems to have been all but forgotten.

The Legislature will receive the last budget to be drafted by outgoing chairman/budget officer Herbert D. Marshall, R-Mentz, within the next few days. It likely will have few surprises. Don't expect a large tax increase; a growing assessment base, as well as increased sales tax revenues will be why. In a time of transition, Legislators are not going to want to have anything controversial, especially within days of the November elections.

The failure to come to any consensus last month on any form of reform should require the county Legislature to pause on any reform efforts for the next two months - the time now is for budget work only.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be e-mailed at cozguytho@aol.com