It was entirely predictable: When the county budget was approved last week, it was by a 17-12 margin --- the ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the County Legislature.

Still, the meeting wasn't entirely devoid of interest.

Democrats proposed four amendments, which were either voted down or declared out of order. Mostly they dealt with fairly minor policy changes and would've redirected (relatively) small amounts of money --- $100,000 in a budget of more than a billion.

But one amendment proposed a substantial policy change, one that would have reordered the way a major government service is paid for in Monroe County and, possibly, how it's delivered.

The amendment was to create county police districts, then charge residents in each district for their use of the Sheriff's Road Patrol.

Several towns in the county have no police force and often rely on the Road Patrol as their primary form of police protection.

Legislator Ted O'Brien, who proposed the Democrats' amendment, said the plan would save the county more than $20 million, by charging towns and municipalities for their use of the Road Patrol. The Democrats have complained for a long time about the inequities of a system that everyone in the county pays for, but that some use more heavily than others.

The City of Rochester, for example, and the Town of Irondequoit, which O'Brien represents, have their own police force. Those forces are the first line of defense for residents, and sheriff's deputies are called in only for backup or for special services. A town might need a specialized team that it doesn't have, for instance: a SWAT team, SCUBA divers, or hostage negotiators.

Democrats, who represent the city and the suburbs of Irondequoit and Brighton (which have their own police forces), complain that their constituents' taxes subsidize the public safety of towns like Mendon, Pittsford, and Riga (which don't have police forces).

If the county established police districts, the Democrats said, it could bill towns according to how much they use the Road Patrol.

The Democrats included this proposal in their package of budget ideas earlier this year. But up until last week's legislature meeting, public debate on a police district had taken place around the edges, at press conferences and in newspaper and television sound bites.

At the legislature meeting, Democrats may well have wished they hadn't brought the subject up.

Majority Leader Bill Smith ripped into the proposal, claiming it was "probably the most dishonest proposal" he'd seen in his 12 years in the legislature and suggesting that the Democrats' endgame was a centralized, metropolitan police force.

An impassioned Smith was prepared for this particular debate with stats and arguments. ("I've been waiting for months to give this speech," he admitted after colleagues noted his enthusiasm.) He opposed the plan, he said, not because it would mean additional taxes for his Pittsford constituents, who rely on the Road Patrol, but because it would jeopardize the police force of his constituents in East Rochester.

Small local departments depend on heavily on the Road Patrol. The Democrats' proposal "would drive them out of business," he said.

Smith read off the number of times the Road Patrol responded to calls for service last year from municipalities with their own police departments: 6,344 in Brighton, 48,394 in Rochester, 4,662 in Gates, 1,367 in Irondequoit. One-third of the calls that the Road Patrol responded to that year were in the city and in towns with their own forces, he said.

"That actually represents, in my opinion, the least amount of support the town police forces get from the sheriff's department," Smith told City Newspaper in a subsequent interview.

At the meeting, he enumerated some of the additional support. Because they can call for sheriff's deputies for backup, many of the smaller towns don't have to maintain as large a police force as they'd otherwise have to. They don't have to maintain costly units like SWAT teams and canine units. And they receive free training from the sheriff's department.

If all of those suddenly came with a price tag attached, Smith said in the interview, "this would price the cost of police departments out of the reach of the towns that want them."

The Democrats' proposal deals only with Road Patrol services, however, not with things like training and the use of special units. But Smith argued at the legislature meeting that it's not always practical to separate one service from another. In response to Smith's questions, Undersheriff Daniel Greene told the legislature that 174 of the 196 deputies assigned to the Road Patrol also serve in special units.

The complexity of the issue caused one Democrat to bail.

Assistant Minority Leader Harry Bronson joined Republicans in voting against the proposal. After the vote, he said he wanted more time to consider the plan.