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As promised, and as accurately reported on your front page some weeks ago, I voted this week against Chautauqua County's proposed budget for 2027. Why?
First: it is not because I believe that county employees or management are less than dedicated or diligent. They are, by and large, both of these things.
It is because this budget fails to get ahead of the two fundamental economic trends that are to blame for our widening gaps between revenue and expenditures. In the 2026 budget the expected overspend vs. revenues was budgeted at $2 million. In fact, it looks like it will come in closer to $7 million. Next year finds us with a budget gap of over $11 million of spending beyond revenue. The trend lines point to that gap widening in the months and years ahead.
This gap is being driven primarily by a New York City dominated Albany and to a lesser extent by the mismatch between the county government's good intentions and the limited growth in our sales and property tax revenues.
Albany mandates a bit over two-thirds of Chautauqua County's spending and funds about half of that. The things it mandates are growing faster and more expensively than the funding it provides. This is likely to get worse.
As you may have read, the bond markets are starting to bid up the interest rates on federal debt (and mortgage rates) as our continuing budget deficits now reach an unsustainable $2 trillion (6% of the total US Economy (GDP). Therefore, the federal government has just started pushing expenditures on things like Medicaid and food stamps down to the states. Nationally, this is a welcome shift as the states generally must run balanced budgets and have no ability to just "print money." However, in high tax states like New York, this expenditure shifting will be painful, and as in the proverbial dairy farm, "stuff" tends to slide downhill to the counties.
At our county level, it is now getting late for "business as usual". With all the best of intentions, we have been cruising along watching our compensation and benefit costs rising faster than our local taxes and being subject to a raft of price increases from many of our suppliers that are above the inflation rate. This cannot continue. We have to bring the concept of productivity into the public sector vocabulary. After years of steady growth, it is inconceivable to me that the 1% per year overall employee productivity target I advocated in committee was considered too big a lift. Further, on the spend side, just a 1% tightening of standards would save the county about $2 million per year.
We're already a year late for well-planned belt tightening, and using the contingency fund to again "kick the can down the road" to the tune of $11 million through 2027 is just not fiscally nor operationally prudent. To be clear, the issue is the failure to get on with addressing the widening gap between expenses and revenues. Use of the fund balance is just the (unsustainable) accounting reflection of this growing deficit.
Fred Johnson is the county legislator representing Westfield and Ripley