What opinions, exactly, are the ones the Chautauqua County Legislature is tired of hearing in its second privilege of the floor during monthly legislature meetings?

Is it federal matters that could impact the county or its residents? Is it local residents’ opinions on energy policy? Is it Chautauqua Lake? Are they tired of Legislator Tom Nelson, D-Jamestown, using time at the end of legislature meetings to speak about federal issues as he did five times in the first six months of 2025?

We ask because those were the most common topics addressed by the public during the second privilege of the floor, which county lawmakers will discuss limiting to only county matters this month. County lawmakers need to more fully justify their reasoning for trying to limit public discourse, particularly when one considers who spoke during the second privilege of the floor and what they spoke about in 2025.

A cursory look through the minutes of the legislature’s minutes showed 39% of those speaking last year during the second privilege of the floor were either county officials or members of the County Legislature itself. If the length of meetings is a problem, perhaps the county’s elected officials need to stop using this portion of the meeting to pontificate. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

By topic, energy policy accounted for the majority of the comments in the second privilege of the floor with 14 – and that includes three people (including state Sen. George Borrello) who spoke in favor of the county’s resolution opposing off-shore wind projects in Lake Erie. Other topics that came up regularly were federal issues (12) and Chautauqua Lake (nine). We would surely hope people raising concerns about Chautauqua Lake, which generates roughly a quarter of the county’s tax revenue, isn’t a topic county lawmakers can’t spare a measly 10 minutes for each month.

It’s ironic that those three topics were among those the Chautauqua County Legislature chose to use its collective voice on last year with virtue signaling resolutions that accomplish nothing.

The county passed a resolution asking the state to pause implementation of the state’s Freshwater Wetlands Act – an issue that was among those raised consistently by members of the Chautauqua Lake Property Owners Association during, you guessed it, the second privilege of the floor at county legislature meetings. By the way, were it not for the CLPOA, we highly doubt the Chautauqua County Legislature would have chimed in on the Freshwater Wetlands Act, because many local officials thought the changes were no big deal until Jim Wehfritz, Ellen Barnes and members of the CLPOA began raising concerns.

No one was happy about a corrections officer’s strike that reached the Lakeview Shock Incarceration Facility last year. There was nothing the county could do about it. But that didn’t stop the county from passing a resolution opposing Gov. Kathy Hochul’s handling of the strike or county legislators and officials from speaking about it during – stop us if you’ve heard this one before – the second privilege of the floor at the February legislature meeting.

And as we learned just last June, federal actions can have impacts on the county – as when the county signaled its opposition to the Trump Administration’s planned closure of the Cassadaga Job Corps with support from county residents who spoke during – you guessed it – the second privilege of the floor. So, should county residents with concerns about how federal actions could affect county residents no longer be able to voice those concerns unless it involves the Job Corps or another pet county project? Should county residents no longer be able to speak publicly to county lawmakers in the hopes that the legislature will agree with them and use the legislature’s bully pulpit to push federal representatives for changes?

The Republicans who run county government can certainly set limits on the use of the floor at legislature meetings. But we urge them to think long and hard about how they do that. Deciding what is or is not a county issue is a slope more slippery than a bobsled track in Cortina, Italy. Do Republicans really want to jump onto a track so fraught with public peril?