By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO — Erie County lawmakers want Albany to pay the rest of a bill left over from last year’s state prison crisis. The county Legislature voted unanimously this month to ask New York to reimburse the county for holding parole violators in its jails while the state prison system, crippled by a corrections officers’ strike and its aftermath, wasn’t taking them.
The amount in dispute is specific: $617,700. That is the claim the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision denied, according to Sheriff John Garcia, who has asked Gov. Kathy Hochul to overrule her own agency.
What the Legislature did
The resolution came from the Legislature’s Republican minority and passed at the Oct. 8 session, according to a Republican caucus release and WIVB. In the summer of 2025, the release said, the county’s jail population grew to nearly 900. The Erie County Holding Center downtown and the Erie County Correctional Facility in Alden typically hold 750 to 800.
“The sheriff had to open additional units. That required more staffing and the cost of housing these additional individuals came with a hefty price tag,” said Minority Leader John Mills.
“There were mandated overtime shifts that negatively impacted the Erie County Sheriff’s budget,” said Legislator Frank Todaro of Lancaster. “Erie County was just one of many across the state forced to take in the additional people. It put tremendous strain on many counties.”
“The Erie County Sheriff’s Office was asked to step up and they did. But we should not be expected to cover what is essentially a state expense,” said Legislator Chris Greene.
The state has paid part of the bill. “While I realize New York State reimbursed the Erie County Sheriff’s Office $2.2 million, the fact remains many individuals meant to be in the state system were instead in Erie County’s custody. This went on for nearly a year. New York State needs to make the Sheriff’s Office whole,” said Legislator Lindsay Lorigo of West Seneca.
Where the $617,700 comes from
The February 2025 wildcat strike by state corrections officers, and the staffing collapse that followed, slowed or stopped DOCCS from accepting people sentenced to state prison. County jails kept them. At the peak, Erie County held more than 160 “state-ready” people, Mr. Garcia told Spectrum News in February. By then the number was back to about 32.
The state reimbursed the county more than $2.2 million for sentenced people who stayed in county custody. The separate $617,700 claim covers parole violators, people who had been ordered back to state custody after violating parole. DOCCS denied it, Mr. Garcia said, and in an Aug. 24 letter he asked the governor to reverse that decision, Spectrum News reported.
“We collectively kept custody of thousands of incarcerated individuals who would have otherwise been transferred into state custody, including some who were arrested after violating the conditions of their parole,” Mr. Garcia said in a statement to Spectrum. “This increased both our census and our operating costs. It is only fair that we are properly compensated by the state.”
County Executive Mark Poloncarz backs him. “Normally, some of their inmates that would have been transferred to state facilities would have been in our facility for, say, like 10 days, 15 days,” Mr. Poloncarz told Spectrum. “And some of them were there for three or four months.”
In his letter, Mr. Garcia also pointed to what the state has spent on its own side of the crisis: roughly $700 million in fiscal 2026 to deploy the National Guard to prisons and another $535 million planned for fiscal 2027. Counties that took on the state’s inmates, he wrote, left local taxpayers “holding the bag.”
What the law says
The dispute turns on Section 601-c of the state Correction Law. It says that when a person “has been convicted of a felony” and sentenced to state custody, and the state hasn’t accepted that person within 10 business days of the county’s written notice that it is ready to transport them, the state pays “at the rate of one hundred dollars per day per capita, or the actual per day per capita cost as certified by the appropriate local official, whichever is less.”
The statute doesn’t mention parole violators. Mr. Garcia argues they should qualify once they have been ordered returned to state custody, and his letter cites a 1988 decision by the state Court of Appeals, according to Spectrum. DOCCS has not publicly explained its denial.
Two other details in the text are worth noting. First, the $100 rate is a ceiling, even when a county’s actual cost is higher. Mr. Garcia has called that rate inadequate. “One-hundred dollars a day in today’s day and age, with inflation and everything else. When you look at housing, food, medicine — that’s gone through the roof,” he told Spectrum in February. Second, the statute says payment begins “with the first day of receipt of written notification.” Mr. Garcia described the reimbursement in February as starting only on day 11. Which reading the state applied to Erie County’s $2.2 million isn’t clear from public records.
What the governor has said
Asked by Spectrum whether Ms. Hochul supports the denial, her office didn’t say. “Following last year’s illegal work stoppage and in response to the nationwide staffing crisis of corrections officers, Governor Hochul has made unprecedented investments in recruitment and retention to support staffing,” the statement said. “We appreciate the work of all of our public safety partners and we will review the letter.”
The Chronicle found no public decision on the letter in the eight weeks since it was sent.
Why it matters now
The county is writing its next budget. Mr. Poloncarz’s proposed $2.4 billion 2027 budget raises the property tax levy, and the Legislature will spend the coming weeks reviewing it. Jail overtime is one of the costs that lands on that levy when the state doesn’t pay.
There are a few ways to settle it. The governor could direct DOCCS to pay the $617,700 claim. State lawmakers could amend Section 601-c to cover parole violators explicitly and to tie the daily rate to actual costs. And DOCCS could publish how it calculates these payments, so that every county knows what it’s owed. Mr. Garcia has said sheriffs statewide held “thousands” of people during the crisis, so Erie County is unlikely to be the only one waiting.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked the Sheriff’s Office for its full cost estimate and the DOCCS denial letter. Any response will be added to this story.
Featured photo: The Erie County Holding Center in downtown Buffalo. Photo by Fortunate4now via Wikimedia Commons, CC0. Cropped.
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