While some understandably say the County’s economic decline has slowly happened over the last 50 years, the statistical evidence proves our economic collapse is much more recent.

Anecdotally it is true that Chautauqua County began losing manufacturing, often to the non-union South, 50 years ago in the 1970s. But those losses were significantly offset by the arrival of Cummins Engine in 1974, with Joe Gerace as Chair of the County Legislature and the first time in Chautauqua County history that Democrats controlled the County legislative body. Cummins’ arrival ultimately led to at least 1,000 jobs to this very date.

The 1970s and early 1980s saw other significant advances in economic development. County leaders volunteered to do very hard things. County government led the way to create County sewer districts around Chautauqua Lake (when the lakefront Towns did not act to build sewers beyond Lakewood and Celoron) that ultimately led to a huge increase in the value of lakefront property and the construction of million dollar homes where modest seasonal cottages once stood.

Also county leaders in that era volunteered to take county responsibility for solid waste management for the whole county. Until that time almost every town, village and city maintained its own open dumps which among other things was very bad for the environment.

In fact, the county’s economy was remarkably steady through the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, until 2008. The New York State Labor Department, for example, reported that our workforce held steady at about 68,000 people for all those decades. Since 2008 our workforce has declined by 18% to about 56,000 people. Today, a staggering 12,000 fewer people are working or seeking work in Chautauqua County than in 2008.

The county’s population only declined from 147,000 in 1970 to 140,000 in 2000 or 4.8% over 30 years.

In contrast the county’s population plummeted from 140,000 in 2000 to only 128,000 in 2020, or 8.6% over just 20 years. To put the loss of 12,000 residents in just 20 years into perspective, that is the equivalent of losing the entire population of the city of Dunkirk, or 2,400 more people than the 9,600 population of Fredonia, by far our largest village.

The 2005 election of a Republican County Executive defeating an eight-year Democratic incumbent turned out to be the beginning of the return of one-party rule in Mayville.

In recent weeks The Post-Journal and the OBSERVER have expressed concern about “listless” county legislators, 15 of 19 being Republicans, who “sit on their hands at monthly meetings content with a status quo that does absolutely nothing to move the county forward.” For example, in August 2016, the county used $200,000 of state money to buy back 66 acres of land from Bush Industries in the South County Industrial Park. This was a wise decision. At that time county officials said that they would develop the property by creating an access road and putting utilities in place, along with other work they said would make the location shovel-ready. However, as of January 2023 the 66 acres looks like the same vacant field as in August 2016.

All 19 county legislators are up for election this November 2023.

A combination of “listless” legislators and a lack of “vision” have combined to create what the newspapers called a “persistent plunge” for Chautauqua County.

The newspapers issued a call to action locally: “But Mayville – and village, town and city elected officials – need to wake up. There are 60 other counties that are doing better than we are in this state. That’s not Albany’s problem. It is ours.”

The last thing this declining county needs is to allow the County Executive to use at least $100,000 of taxpayer money to hire a public relations person (euphemistically called a “Media Information Officer”) to tell us day after day what a swell job Chautauqua County’s Executive is doing and how great things are in Chautauqua County. We do not need a paid PR person, we need the truth out of Mayville. We have had 49 years now of County Executives who never used our money for a public relations mouthpiece. We should not start now.

In general, Americans have always believed competition is a good thing. Federal anti-trust laws make sure there is competition in American business and industry. Competition gives us better quality at lower prices.

The absence of competition in County elective politics since 2005 apparently tends to give us “listless” legislators content with our County’s population decline and economic collapse and a lack of “vision” by our elected county officials.

Chautauqua County can do better. Sixty of the state’s 62 counties already are.

Fred Larson is a Jamestown resident, a former Chautauqua County legislator, a former City Court judge and a former Chautauqua County attorney.