The Cayuga County government's asbestos scandal (yes, that's the word people should not hesitate to use) has exposed a major weakness in the county's public communications procedures.

Forget the silence from county legislators about what happened and who knew about it and when did they know? It's obvious that lawmakers are keeping their mouths shut on those questions on the advice of attorneys, who are trying to minimize the potential legal and political damage this whole episode has caused.

Instead, focus on how the county continues to fumble over getting some of the most basic information out to the public in a timely way.

It was not until Monday that the county could officially tell us where the Board of Elections, which had to close shop early Friday because high levels of asbestos were found in its building, would be temporarily set up and how the public could do business with it.

As soon as Legislature Chairman George Fearon knew about the shutdown, he should have put out a press release for all media that explained what happened and given detailed instructions for the public about how it could conduct business with the elections board.

Remember, the deadline is Friday for registering to vote in the September primary. And while registration can now be done using the mail and the Internet, some people - in fact, plenty of people - still prefer the old-fashioned way of turning a form over to a real person to make sure it's in the right hands.

Perhaps, if the elections board couldn't operate on Friday and had limited operational ability on Monday, the county could have set up a contingency for people to bring such items to the county clerk's office. Who knows? Perhaps such a contingency was already in place, but no one bothered to make an announcement about it.

The good news for Fearon and the Legislature is that this did not happen closer to the general election. They have time to get a system in place, and to get the word out clearly and loudly about what they're doing.