The Cayuga County Legislature must have been tired of going to the county office building these past few weeks.

So instead of continuing to work on the proposed county budget for 2009, legislators voted to adopt the spending plan last week.

Only one legislator voted against the budget. George Fearon, R-Springport, said while he felt the overall budget represents a solid plan, he felt there was still room to find more spending to cut. And, he pointed out, there's still plenty of time to take a look at things.

Fearon was absolutely correct. And his reasoning applies this year more than ever.

That's because local government entities throughout the state are facing the prospect of funding reductions from the state, which is in the midst of an historic budget deficit crisis.

The problem on the state level is so severe that Gov. David Paterson has agreed to release his proposed state budget for the 2009-2010 fiscal year on Dec. 16, a full month ahead of when the state constitution says he must do this.

Part of the reason for Paterson moving this task up is to give local government entities more time to prepare their budgets.

Truth be told, this is a gift for county legislators. Most years, the county must adopt a budget with no numbers from the state to work from. This year, they could have had a set of numbers from Paterson that they could safely assume would be at the low end of what gets passed by the state Legislature.

County manager Wayne Allen, in explaining his proposed budget the day it was released a few weeks ago, even pointed to the Dec. 16 date as a key one in the budget process.

While it's true that the entire county budget can't be put together after Dec. 16, it still would have made a great deal of sense to at least see what Paterson's plan looks like, so they can know if the county budget is realistic.

But the county Legislature chose to pack it in early. They had worked a tax levy increase down to 2.7 percent, and in their minds that was enough for this year.

Such complacency is not what residents deserve from their elected officials.