MAYVILLE – The legislature last night made quick work of the other items on its agenda, including the approval of two local law amendments. One dealt with the county occupancy tax, extending its implementation through November 2015. The other amendment dealt with the county’s code of ethics and was intended to clean up language in code.
One of the items on the agenda that didn’t see action was a tabled resolution dealing with local labor. Last month, Legislator Bob Whitney (D-Jamestown) had introduced a resolution that called for any project that receives financial assistance from the county IDA – be it a tax break or a low interest loan – to be required to use at least 90 percent of local labor and supplies, whenever possible. The definition of local labor under the resolution includes workers from not only Chautauqua County, but also the four adjacent counties. The resolution was modeled after one already in place in Erie County, NY.
The resolution did not receive enough votes to be pulled from the table during last night’s meeting – it needed 13 but only received 8. The failure to act on the resolution effectively killed it. However, Whitney told WRFA following the meeting that he intended to reintroduce it during the legislature’s October meeting.
Another resolution that failed was one introduced by Timothy Hoyer (D-Jamestown), which called for changing the rules by which committees are created and chairs are appointed. Hoyer said his intention was to remove political influence from the process. He also wanted to make it easier to train new legislators on the budget process by requiring an informational meeting for any new lawmaker voted into the legislature. However, his resolution was defeated with 16 “no” votes.
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