Patch state rift at Suffolk jail

More than three months later, Suffolk County is still paying for Tropical Storm Irene. The state's prison watchdog didn't like the way Suffolk evacuated its jail inmates. So it took an inflexible action that is forcing the county to spend money on sending more of its inmates to Rikers Island and Nassau's facility.

The county and the state's Commission of Correction have a tense relationship over the commission's push to have the county build a new jail at Yaphank, to replace the existing decrepit facility. Some inmates will start moving in next spring.

This summer, more than 100 inmates were living, with the agency's OK, in a temporary structure at the jail. When Irene threatened, the agency didn't like the jail's evacuation plan and directed that the inmates be moved to Nassau or Rikers. But those jails couldn't handle them all. So Sheriff Vincent DeMarco sent a few to Nassau and moved the rest to dormitories in the Yaphank jail.

Though DeMarco argued that the temporary structure had stood up to other storms and was rated to handle winds far worse than Irene's, he followed Albany's demand that it be evacuated.

But the agency felt his handling of the moves didn't meet state regulations. So it cut the number of inmates Suffolk could hold beyond its design capacity. That forces the county to ship out more inmates, at a cost that could reach several million dollars a year.

Early in his term, County Executive-elect Steve Bellone and DeMarco should work together on resolving this money-draining standoff with Albany.