At age 79, John Mills will cap off his nearly 50 years of public service at the end of this year

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The longest serving current member of the Erie County Legislature says this term will be his last.

John Mills (R-11th district) will not seek re-election and will bow out after having served 21 years as a county lawmaker.

Mills, first elected in 2005, recently celebrated his 79th birthday. 

He eventually helped lead a republican revolution that saw the GOP take the legislature majority in 2013. 

Mills was then chosen by his fellow lawmakers to serve as the first republican chairman of the legislature in 36 years, and held the post for several years until democrats regained control of the body.

“Before this, I served on the Orchard Park town council for 22 years and four years in the zoning board before that, and a year on the Public Safety Committee before that. So I’ve been in government almost 48 years,” said Mills, during an interview with WGRZ-TV. 

“I love doing it, that’s why I stayed so long. Plus the people I represent have decided that my accomplishments were worth reelecting me. But you know, I have a family too, and I have a business, and I’ve been juggling that for 40 some years, so I thought it’s time that maybe I moved on, kind of retire and just look to another adventure, do some traveling. I’ve got a house in Florida that I bought some years ago. I got a house in Chautauqua Lake and a house in Orchard Park. And I have a family with nine grandkids.”

When Mills first took office in the legislature in January of 2006, the county was emerging from the infamous “Red-Green” budget days and a control board had been installed to oversee county finances.

Helping to right county finances since then is among the things he sees as a major accomplishment in county government.

“Our county’s fund balance is now $180 million. Back then it was $6 million. We were in bad shape back then,” Mills said.

Mills also lists infrastructure improvements as among the biggest steps the county has made during his tenure in the legislature.

“Roads and bridges. I was very aggressive in making sure the infrastructure was taken care of in my district. That’s not the case in the City of Buffalo. Obviously, not to throw stones at the City of Buffalo, but their infrastructure is failing miserably and it continues to fail because they’re like 100 years behind the times.”

Not willing to let things slide

An effort to preserve a quality of life icon at Chestnut Ridge Park stands out in Mills’ mind as one of his greatest achievements.

“One of the things I encountered when I first walked in as a legislator was the administration at that time wanted to take down the toboggan run at Chestnut Ridge,” Mills recalled. “Orchard Park is my hometown. Those toboggans were put up there by the WPA program back in the 30s, and they wanted to tear them down because they thought they were a liability. And I went to the news and went to the TV stations and aggressively focused on keeping those toboggans, and look at what they look like now. They’re one of the only set of toboggan runs…I think there’s another in Michigan, maybe. Other than that, that’s the only set of toboggan runs probably on the East Coast. People come from all over Erie County and even counties outside of Erie County to use those toboggans. And when Chris Collins came on board as County Executive, I convinced him to start putting more money into the casino. And look what that looks like now. County Executive Mark Poloncarz and I worked together put more money into it as well. It’s an asset. It’s the people who own those assets, and we’re just caretakers of the people’s property.”

Mills recalled reaching across the aisle to democratic Legislator Thomas A. Loughran in a bipartisan effort to reduce the number of members of the County Legislature.

“It was about cutting costs,” recalled Mills.  “We reduced it from 15 to11. It’s a savings of $450,000 a year forever. And then we went and eliminated our district offices and brought everything downtown. That’s another $350,000 a year.”

Those moves, according to Mills, were upsetting to party chairman in part because of the resulting loss of patronage jobs and because it made it more difficult for them to control individual districts.

However, Mills believes the county still spends too much money.

“We really haven’t focused enough on our spending habits,” Mills said. “We spend too much money…on things that we shouldn’t be spending.”

When asked to provide an example, Mills quickly pointed to ErieNet, a pet project of County Executive Mark Poloncarz to bring high speed fiber optic internet access to municipal institutions. $37 million has been spent on ErieNet since it was first proposed by Poloncarz seven years ago, and the system has yet to operate.

“$37 million could be used for a lot of other things. How you spend and where you spend it is vital. Personnel is the biggest cost we have in government, and we’re loaded with personnel,” Mills said.

Like many elder statesmen, the vitriol that marks modern day politics is disturbing to Mills.

“My prime directive was to get something done,” he said. “And I know the only way you’re going to get something done is make friends across the aisles. So on both sides of the aisle I made friends. Now you look at Washington and it’s a three ring circus. It’s moving in the wrong direction. People are hating each other.”

“That’s not what the people they represent want them to do. The people I represent want us to work together to get things done. For some reason they (politicians) now think they got to, you know, fight with each other and make the news. I tell my colleagues we all represent the whole of Erie County, not just individual districts. So that’s something I pride myself in,” said Mills.

Mills had a long run in county government and grouses that few of his modern contemporaries are willing to serve as long as he has.

“A lot of things have changed as far as the philosophy of government,” said Mills. “What disappoints me about government in general is that people coming up to serve in the legislature have no idea how government works. Most of them have not been in government, and so they don’t know how roads and bridges and things like that work, and what you need to do to make these things happen. So you bring a new person up in the legislature, and they’re on a learning curve of two years, actually one year, the second year of their two year term is running for re election. So that that always, always bothered me. I really love doing what I do. I was a pleasure and an honor to serve people in District 11.”