MONTICELLO, NY — An ad hoc group of Sullivan County residents is circulating a petition that calls for a referendum seeking to reverse the vote of the Sullivan County Legislature to acquire bonding of $95 million to pay for the planned new county jail.

Kathie Aberman, a retired Liberty school teacher, and Barbara Lerner, who with her family owns the Quickway Metal Fabricators in Monticello, are at the center of the effort. They say that 1,800 signatures are required for the effort to succeed, so they are shooting for 3,500 in case some are thrown out.

Even so, it’s not entirely clear that the state will allow a referendum on this matter. Aberman said they contacted the Commission of Corrections (COC) and the state comptroller’s office, and “no one could say this is or is not permitted.”

Permissive referendums (referendums to override government decisions that have already been made) are allowed in towns and villages and other municipalities on some decisions, but it was unclear if any county legislative decisions can be subject to permissive referendums. So the refereundum drive could be breaking new ground in the state. Aberman said, “Aside from the issue of the jail, it’s a very important question that should be answered.”

Both Aberman and Lerner said they agree that something has to be done about the jail, because it is not fair for the inmates or the jail employees to have to endure the state of disrepair of the current crumbling jail. But they object to the scale of the new jail.

Aberman said that in the past, the COC was responsible for seeing that inmates were housed in safe conditions, but under the administration of Gov. George Pataki, the duties of the COC were expanded, and now the COC determines the size and construction timetables of county jails. She said the COC puts pressure on counties to build, and a very small number of businesses bid on the contracts to build the jails. She said LaBella Associates, the consulting company that has the contract for the Sullivan jail, “has built jails in just about every county in the state. I really question why most of the work goes to one company.”

She cited a 2007 study that said there were 6,000 new jail beds at a cost of over $1 billion at the same time that the prison population in the state was decreasing. This has resulted in an increase of the number of state prisoners in county jails. County jails are used to detain state parole violators and also to house homeland security and ICE detainees.

Aberman said, “In general across the state, 25% of inmates are being held in jails or prison because of substance-abuse issues. If someone is selling drugs to children, we certainly don’t want them in the community, but if someone is in jail because they tried to break into a soda machine to get money to buy drugs, there’s better ways to deal with them than putting them in jail. The way the criminal justice system works, we put a lot more people in jail that need to be in jail, and that affects the required size of the project, the scale of it. And if we can find ways to treat people outside of the new jail system and treat them more humanely and effectively, we could have a smaller jail and not put so much of our resources into it.”

Lerner, whose company offered the county a plan to build a modular, metal jail in 1997, said, “I look at this project from the construction point of view. The number of cells is about 20% higher than the maximum number [of inmates] that we ever have in our community. I look at the size of the administration building and the sheriff’s road patrol, and each has a larger footprint than the jail’s cell population pods, which make up the 234-bed facility.”

She said, “The sheriff’s road patrol building is 22,000 square feet on one floor… 10 times what they have now. It just doesn’t seem like a practical move. They could get by with 10,000 square feet. The administration portion is monstrous and they are not taking into account the maintenance costs.”

She cited a Pattern for Progress report that said, “The best way to cut the cost is to cut the administration, and the legislators refuse to consider that.” She also noted that the design of the jail at this point is 10 years old.

The contact email for Aberman and Lerner is cap.sullivan.tax@gmail.com.