The budget may have dominated last week's County Legislature meeting, but there was one other important bit of action.

The County Legislature gave the Monroe County Water Authority its go-ahead to borrow money for a proposed eastside water treatment plant. The plant has already sparked controversy, most recently at a public hearing held by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (see "Water Plant Wars," December 6).

For a capital project like this one, the Water Authority can borrow money one of two ways. The county can borrow the money on the authority's behalf. Or the authority can issue its own bonds; it just needs to get the County Legislature's consent first.

It makes a certain amount of sense for the county and Water Authority to take the latter course. As Deputy County Executive James Smith (a former Water Authority executive director) told the legislature, the authority's bond rating is better than the county's. That means it can borrow money at a lower rate than the county can.

What Smith didn't say was that it takes only a simple majority for the legislature to give its consent for the authority's bonding. For the county to borrow the money would require approval by two-thirds of the legislators. That would mean at least three Democrats would have to be on board, and Democrats have been critical of the eastside project.

The controversy over the proposal wasn't eased any by the fact that it was introduced as a "matter of urgency." Matters of urgency are designed to give the county executive some flexibility to get legislation passed in a hurry when a situation calls for it. But that bypasses the committee process, where legislators hammer out policy. It thereby bypasses much of the public scrutiny that most legislative proposals get.

And on this particular project, the Water Authority has agreed to delay construction for 18 months while the city and county negotiate a new water-sharing agreement. That made the Brooks administration's rush with the funding proposal doubly puzzling.

Minority Leader Carla Palumbo raised that issue, saying she was "concerned and surprised."

Smith's response failed to address the question.

"Passage of this does not change that agreement," he said.

But that doesn't address why there was so much urgency that the proposal had to bypass the committee process.

Smith's tautological response: "This would be the appropriate time to give consent."

The Democrats' attempt to table the proposal was defeated, and the legislature voted, along party lines, to let the authority borrow the money for the plant.