The Chemung County Legislature passed two resolutions at their monthly meeting on Monday, February 8th.
The first was to establish a legislative committee consisting of five legislators selected by the Chairman of the Legislature and the other resolution was to hire CGR Consultants to conduct a study of the makeup of the legislature’s current 15 legislative districts, the Executive Branch and the County Treasurer.
It will examine whether or not the current number of legislative districts are more than needed since the establishment of the legislative form of government in 1974 along with the configuration of the actual districts based on the 2021 census. Every ten years following the census, the legislature must examine and reallocate the number of constituents that each legislator represents so every district is within 5% of the number of citizens in each district.
This study will also look at the County Executive form of government vs. a County Manager/Administrator style that are in other counties across New York.
The third topic it will address is the elected County Treasurer position and whether it would be practical or more efficient to have an appointed comptroller or finance manager.
The Chairman of the Legislature issued the following press release below after the resolutions passed:
Press Release - Chemung County Legislature considers Legislative Re-Districting and Government Efficiencies
Chairman Manchester announces his appointment of the 5 legislators to serve on the committee:
Memo - Appointments to the Leg. Redistricting and Efficiency of County Gov. Operations Advisory Comm.
The Benchmarking Legislative Composition and Government Efficiency study that the Center for Government Relations will be conducting for the county can be read below:
CGR-legilstiverequest020121 (1) copy
Legislator Strange will keep the public updated on his legislative Facebook page and his website through the entire process.