The idea of automatic cost-of-living-adjustments for Chautauqua County legislators is, and frankly always was, a bad idea.

We weren’t in favor of legislators receiving a 64% increase in pay in 2024. While that was the first raise in county lawmakers’ pay in about 20 years. A $5,700 raise doesn’t look like much until you realize it equaled a nearly $110,000 increase to the county budget. Now, next year, legislators are set to receive another pay increase tied to inflation.

Can all the county residents who work two jobs raise their hands if their part-time employer have increased their pay 64% over the past couple of years with another automatic raise coming next year? We don’t see any hands, either.

That’s because the private sector lives in the real world. There are many people in our midst working multiple jobs to make ends meet who didn’t get a huge bump in pay in 2024. They aren’t guaranteed a big raise any time soon, either.

County Republicans are fond of saying they’re acting fiscally responsible with their handling of the county’s fund balance. But in our opinion the idea of automatic pay raises flies in the face of fiscal responsibility. Automatic raises aren’t earned. Legislators who attend every committee meeting and town or village board meeting in their district receive the same raises as those who do the bare minimum. Legislators who speak out and act often on the legislature floor receive the same pay increase as lawmakers who last spoke their mind publicly when Vince Horrigan was still the county executive. If the county were ever to find itself in the financial position it was in prior to the sale of the Chautauqua County Home and the increase in the county’s sales tax secured by Horrigan several years ago, automatic pay raises would be the first cost-cutting measure we’d suggest.

So why wait?

When county lawmakers want a raise, they should have to justify that raise to the voting public rather than get an automatic raise each year. This is an opportunity for county Republicans to show some fiscal responsibility. We’ll know in a couple of weeks if they choose to take it.