§ 89-a. 1. Management of alternate correctional facilities.
Superintendence, management and control of alternate correctional
facilities and the eligible incarcerated individuals housed therein
shall be as directed by the commissioner consistent with the following:
an alternate correctional facility shall be operated pursuant to rules
and regulations promulgated for such facilities by the commissioner in
consultation with the state commission of correction and the provisions
of the operation agreement. The commissioner shall operate such facility
insofar as practicable in the same manner as a general confinement
facility which houses medium security state incarcerated individuals.
Nothing herein, however, shall preclude the commissioner from enhancing
staffing or programming to accommodate the particular needs of eligible
incarcerated individuals pursuant to the operation agreement. No
incarcerated individual shall be housed in any alternate correctional
facility until such facility has been established in accordance with the
provisions of section eighty-nine of this article. The population in an
alternate correctional facility shall not exceed its design capacity of
approximately seven hundred eligible incarcerated individuals except
pursuant to variances permitted by law, rule or regulation or court
order.

2. Notwithstanding any other provisions of law, no variance
authorizing an alternate correctional facility to exceed its design
capacity shall be granted after March fifteenth, nineteen hundred
ninety-two unless the mayor of the city of New York submits, together
with the variance request, a certificate of emergency demonstrating the
need for such variance and that reasonable alternatives to the granting
of the variance do not exist, and containing a detailed summary of
measures that will be taken to restore compliance with such design
capacity. The chairman of the state commission of correction shall
transmit, in a timely manner, notice of such request to the chairmen of
the senate crime and correction committee and the assembly correction
committee.