The Cayuga County Legislature's decision last week to renovate and expand its North Street Community Mental Health Center left a few people scratching their heads.

This decision, made at a special meeting that was advertised as an executive session, seemingly came out of nowhere. For months, county leaders had focused on Auburn Memorial Hospital as the best place to house county mental health services. The idea for an AMH project came in the fall, when the state began withholding aid to the county in large part because of the county's deficient facilities.

We remember emergency meetings and bold statements at that time about moving quickly to get an AMH plan going. Many local leaders billed such a move as a win-win, something that would greatly enhance county mental health care and also benefit the hospital.

All of that talk disappeared after one meeting last week.

The good news is that all sides seem to be OK with the new plan. The hospital is not particularly troubled by the shift, and it appears county mental health clients favor this proposal.

The bad news is that this change in course essentially wastes several months worth of work that had been focused on an AMH move. In addition, the Legislature has failed to address the problem of failed leadership at the top of the mental health department, which has been hit with state citations for years.

We worry that the Legislature has now extended the time under which the county's mental health care facilities are substandard, and we worry that the state funding - money that ultimately must be made up for by local taxpayers - will remain dry for some time to come.

At this point, we're not arguing that the Legislature made a mistake last week and should reverse course. We just wish they had come up with this approach much sooner.

We hope with this new plan, they start to demonstrate a true commitment to see that this project gets done quickly and correctly.