Legislator Chad Ryan, pictured here after winning his 2025 race for the 8th District county legislature seat, faces Tammy Honeywell in the 2026 Democratic primary for the same seat. Credit: Maddi Jane Brown | Central Current

Chad Ryan is running to continue representing the Onondaga County Legislature’s 8th District. Ryan won his seat on the legislature in November 2025, when Democrats won a legislature majority for the first time in decades. 

He is a funeral director and has previously served on the Syracuse Common Council. Ryan is primarily concerned with addressing poverty, housing access and bipartisan cooperation in county government, he said. 

Ryan faces challenger Tammy Honeywell in the Democratic primary for the seat. He beat Honeywell in the 2025 primary. You can read more about Honeywell here. 

Editor’s note: Central Current accepted responses to its question-and-answer series in written form. 

Central Current: As a legislator, how do you plan to make housing more affordable in Onondaga County?

Chad Ryan: First, increasing what developers can access through the O-CHIP program. It’s not a perfect program, but it’s operational and it works. If the county wants more housing built, the incentive needs to be worth responding to. 

Second, greater consistency in the zoning process across municipalities. That’s the heaviest lift on this list. No town is eager to cede zoning control, and that resistance is understandable, which is why the approach has to be incentive-based. A dedicated fund that rewards municipalities for participating, tied to a comprehensive plan, with something tangible offered in exchange. You can’t mandate your way to regional housing policy in Onondaga County. You have to make participation worth their while.

Third, a construction loan fund for developers offering low-interest loans to get projects off the ground. A significant amount of housing that should get built doesn’t because the financing gap between a viable project and a fundable one is too wide. A county-backed loan fund can close that gap. None of these are untested ideas. Communities across the country have used versions of all three to move the needle on housing supply. The question is whether Onondaga County commits the resources to do it here, and whether the results are tracked and made public so residents can see what’s actually being delivered.

CC: What’s one thing the county could do that it isn’t currently doing to prepare Central New York for Micron’s arrival?

Ryan: We need to expand the journeyworker-to-apprentice ratio for Micron construction contracts. Under New York’s prevailing wage law, the number of apprentices a contractor can put on a job site is capped by the number of journeyworkers present. On a project this size, that ratio limits how many of our own people we’re allowed to train on the most significant construction project in Central New York history. I intend to introduce a resolution calling on the state to expand that ratio specifically for Micron construction contracts. The construction workforce is being assembled now. If we wait, the window closes.

CC: The Democratic caucus has set transparency as one of its top priorities. In your capacity as a legislator, what is one way you’d like to make the county more transparent?

Ryan: As Chair of the Facilities Committee, I’ve made transparency a practice, not a talking point. In March, I brought the aquarium before the committee for the first time, putting the status of the project, the timeline, and the exact cost to taxpayers on the record publicly. When $5.7 million was diverted from the Greater Syracuse Soundstage Development Corporation into the aquarium project, I convened a committee meeting to get the facts on the record and give the parties involved a platform to be heard. When Friends of the Zoo board members shared allegations of retaliation for refusing to fund that project, I gave them a public forum and a seat at the table. A resolution followed within days. The area where I want to push further is contracts. During my time on the Syracuse Common Council contracts came before the body with meaningful review. At the county level, we are authorizing money for projects with very little oversight once that authorization is made. There are legitimate concerns about the capacity to do that review work, but capacity is a reason to build a better process, not a reason to skip one. When the county writes a check, legislators and the public should be able to see what we got. Right now, that accountability is too thin.

CC: The Democratic caucus has a majority for the first time in decades. Do you think the majority has done enough with the power it has? Why or why not? 

Ryan: Yes. Our caucus has exercised real control over committees and agendas while still being fair to Republican colleagues in process. We have used the tools available to us to move priorities we believe in and force items onto the agenda that otherwise would not have gotten there. We have delivered accountability where there was none before. The deeper shift is structural. Republican legislators had long deferred to the County Executive rather than exercise independent legislative judgment. That dynamic has changed. The Legislature is moving toward being a genuinely co-equal branch of county government, and that is good for residents regardless of party. There is still work to do. But the foundation has been laid and we are building on it.

CC: In local public hearings, constituents have raised concerns about the environmental impacts of Micron and wastewater treatment. Do you believe the county has done enough to protect our water resources? If not, what’s one specific thing you would change?

Ryan: No. The current situation is murky at best. The County Executive formed Onworks several years ago, which tells you he has had a long-term plan for industrial wastewater treatment for some time. He has made clear he wants to run this through the county to access the favorable bond rating, but he also created a separate entity specifically so he could move forward if county bonding isn’t available. That kind of contingency planning is fine. What is not fine is the lack of transparency with the Legislature about how any of this is supposed to work. I have had informal conversations about the oversight the state and federal government will have over wastewater discharge. But county legislators have received very little concrete communication, no real strategic framework, and no honest accounting of what the county is being asked to take on. The concern I have is that this is deliberate. The longer this process moves forward without the Legislature at the table, the more we get maneuvered into a position where a vote against the financing structure becomes a vote against Micron itself. That is not a fair choice and it is not how a co-equal branch of government should be treated. What I want is straightforward. Real conversations about how this process should work. What user agreements should look like. What state and federal oversight requirements actually are. And clear, direct discussions about what we are unwilling to compromise on before we are too far down the road to say so.

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Leila Adelstein is a newsroom intern reporting on local news and writing features for the Central Current. She will be a junior at Hamilton College in the fall where she studies Public Policy and Studio...