As the Cayuga County Legislature starts its new legislative year, a year in which more than half of the body will be up for re-election, it is time for them to focus on a handful of items to work on. Three that instantly come to mind are left over from last year and years gone by, but do need their attention.

DEFINE

RESPONSIBILITIES

Now that county manger Wayne Allen is in office and the Legislature has moved the position of chairman back to part-time, it is time to codify what the roles of each, and the Legislature as a whole, will be.

While there was a unified push to create a manager position last year, the focus was not on the details of the position. Now that Allen has been hired and is in place, it is time for the Legislature to now get specific in what they expect the post to accomplish.

What will be his budgetary responsibilities and oversight role of specific projects and personnel issues? For his first 60 days in office, he has largely been off the hook on the one major personnel issue facing the county #- what to do about John Chick who was indicted over the asbestos fiasco #- that type of non involvement and “no comment” shouldn't continue for much longer.

Yet, the big question is what, if any, responsibilities the Legislature and its individual committees will be willing to cede to him, voluntarily.

FIX THE LIMITS

The resignation and then re-appointment of chairman George Fearon again raised the issue of the poorly worded 12 year term limit law that, despite a year of talk over how the 1995 law was poorly constructed and needed to be fixed, has seen nothing done to resolve its inconsistencies.With this being a local election year, this is the time to put together a fix, not a band aid, to be put before voters in November. Term limits were widely approved by voters 11 years ago and it is time to let them, decide whether they want them or not.

COME CLEAN

There is much in the air (no pun intended) about exactly what county officials knew and when they knew it about the botched asbestos removal effort. While there might be legitimate legal reasons to say nothing (which the Legislature has done an excellent job of), these are still elected officials. They have a responsibility to explain the timeline of when and who knew things and why it took close to a month to inform workers of a problem. The time for full disclosure is now.

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