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As the effects of the Great Recession linger, it's unlikely that sticking with the status quo will be a sustainable model for economic development and job growth in Chautauqua County, or nationwide.

For that reason, the Chautauqua County Workforce Investment Board (WIB) has embarked on a new, joint venture with the workforce investment boards of northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio to create a louder, more unified voice for regional development projects.

"By coming together as three regions from three different states," said Sue McNamara, executive director of the Chautauqua County WIB, "what we began to do is to create a stronger voice for the need of federal investment in the areas of employment and training for our region because we represent about a million people across the tri-state region."

The collaboration unites the three WIBs that provide services for the workforces of the mostly rural counties between Cleveland and Buffalo. Joining Chautauqua County in this great lake tri-state initiative are Geauga, Ashtabula and Portage Counties of Ohio and Clarion, Crawford, Erie, Forest, Warren and Venango Counties of Pennsylvania.

Last week, at the SUNY Fredonia High-Tech Business Incubator, McNamara met with Craig Sernik, executive director of the Geauga Ashtabula Portage Partnership, and Michele Zieziula, chief executive officer of northwest Pennsylvania's Regional Center for Workforce Excellence, along with other stakeholders, including Bruce Herman, the deputy commissioner for Workforce Development in the New York State Department of Labor, and Joseph W. Mayernick, executive director of the Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County, Ohio.

The group assessed progress made thus far and established the initiative's future focuses.

The goal is "creating economic synergies," McNamara said. "We want to increase the economic viability of the region - more jobs, increasing wages.

"We're working as equal partners We decide who might take a lead based on what is logical to what we're trying to accomplish," she added. "We're trying to build off of our assets and capacity. And that's great because if one entity doesn't have the capacity and somebody can step in, there's still a benefit. So, it's true teamwork."

The cooperative effort is best described as "a workforce development partnership that recognizes the need for collaboration across political borders in a region that shares common workforce and economic development challenges and opportunities," according to a document from the tri-state initiative.

The challenges are significant, and they know no borders, according to statistics uncovered and shared by the regional initiative.

Younger workers are leaving the region, while the rest of the workforce continues to age. The region has a higher median age and a higher percentage of population over the age of 65 than the national average and the average of the three states.

Meanwhile, the region has experienced a more substantial loss of population, especially in the age 25-44 demographic, than each of the three states have. Brain drain remains a serious concern across the region.

In the tri-state region, researchers have found higher poverty rates, particularly in the urban areas. Erie, Pa., has a poverty rate of 25.5 percent. Jamestown is not far off, with 20.9 percent of its population living in poverty. The region, as a whole, maintains a poverty rate above 15 percent.

Also, personal income growth lags behind, and the region endures a lower percentage of hiring growth.

These challenges are not the only commonalities the region shares. The economies of each county are very similar.

The manufacturing industry is hugely influential across the region. One-fifth of the total workforce is employed in the manufacturing sector. In addition, partially because of the aging population, the health care industry is the second largest employer across the region, accounting for 16.8 percent of total jobs.

There are also cross-regional assets such as the shoreline of Lake Erie, a strong agricultural industry especially the wine and grape corridor, natural resources that present possibilities for energy industries and a low cost of living.

The regional initiative will be an attempt to move beyond the political boundaries of state borders to enhance the regional economy.

"We share a very similar economic base," Zieziula, of northwestern Pennsylvania, said, "and we're really looking to make the borders go away because they're irrelevant to the workforce."

"The state borders are political boundaries, but the reality of businesses is: they do business across borders," McNamara said. "So, we're going to also tackle barriers that may exist, which will help businesses."

"In Ohio," Mayernick of the Ashtabula County Growth Partnership said, "we think of the three C's Columbus, Cincinnati and Cleveland - but we have more synergies, economically, with this region than we do with Cleveland or Youngstown and definitely Columbus and Cincinnati."

A stronger voice is one likely result of the partnership. But McNamara hopes the unification of the three WIBs will make a real impact on the economy.

"The reality of economic development is it's truly a regional thing," she said, "so some of the issues we're working on - such as technology and broadband - if we work together with one voice, we can decrease some of the barriers for both employment and business.

"In our whole conversation, it has become stronger that we're not just coming together for resources," she added. "We're coming together to solve the problems that have been created inadvertently or without thinking."

Sernik, of northeastern Ohio, said the partnership has already been beneficial for him. He has learned something new each time the group has met.

"It gives us a great opportunity to share the best practices of each of our states," he said. "Every time I come to one of these meetings, I learn something that New York or Pennsylvania are doing better than Ohio, and I hope sometimes they learn things that we're doing in Ohio that might be a little bit better than their practices."

Across the state of New York, 33 different WIBs claim jurisdiction over local economies. However, there are not 33 different economies in the state, Bruce of the state labor department said.

The tri-state initiative is an example of a movement that's making waves across the state and nation - a regional approach to economic development.

"We're going to maintain the basic WIB structure, but we're incentivizing collaboration," Bruce said, about state development efforts, "Economies are regional in nature. They often, therefore, straddle county boundaries."

He added, "This regional partnership takes the approach that we've been doing in-state - trying to focus on regions - and applies it in a regional context that happens to be across states. We know that's how a lot of regional economies, that are relevant to our state, are structured."

In addition to being a regional economy, it's also a regional workforce. The Lake Erie region shares workers across borders.

"There are a lot of people who migrate between the states in terms of finding work. Think of all the New York people who work for GE in Erie, or all the Pennsylvania people Warren County people who come in and work at WCA Hospital."

And the executive directors of the three WIBs are perfect examples of that shared workforce, Sernik said.

"I originally grew up and born in Pennsylvania and went to Ohio," Sernik said. "We've got Michele, who's a New York resident and came to Pennsylvania, and Sue is from Ohio and came to New York. It's very typical of workforce that we're mobile in our education and where we work."

There is growth potential in forming this partnership. The three entities can create regional training or support programs for entry-level employees or entrepreneurs, and they can jointly pursue grants to make their applications more appealing, among other possibilities.

However, they are realistic about the tri-state initiative's prospective impact on future economic development.

"We don't fool ourselves into believing that we can solve the problems of our local, regional economy. It's ultimately going to driven by businesses," Sernik said. "But by coming together, having this dialogue, applying for these extra funds and developing new strategies, we certainly like to think of ourselves as a very important source of assistance in that. We're not going to be able to solve these problems, but we certainly want to be helping businesses as much as we can."

The law that governs WIBs - the Workforce Investment Act - contains provisions that allows workforce boards to form cross-border, multi-state regions. The Lake Erie tri-state regional initiative is pursuing such legal recognition. The governors of the three states will have to agree to participate, and then the federal government will recognize the regional group.

A recognized group will possess a stronger voice to advocate for public and private sector investment in the region.