§ 89-a. 1. Management of alternate correctional facilities. Superintendence, management and control of alternate correctional facilities and the eligible inmates 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 inmates. Nothing herein, however, shall preclude the commissioner from enhancing staffing or programming to accommodate the particular needs of eligible inmates pursuant to the operation agreement. No inmate 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 inmates 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.