BUFFALO, N.Y. - Erie County wasted nearly a million dollars fighting the U.S. Department of Justice before agreeing to mediation, according to Comptroller Mark Poloncarz.

A month after a federal judge refused to dismiss the DOJ lawsuit against the county over conditions at the downtown holding center, the county has requested a process known as mediation. Both sides will now discuss the possibility of a mutually agreeable resolution.

"This is money that was wasted," Poloncarz (D) said. "It could have been all avoided if we sat down with the federal government last year."

The feds first filed suit last fall, after the county refused to give its investigators independent access to the holding center. The county responded harshly, labeling the DOJ and its investigators as liberal activists bent on forcing the county to offer plush housing for inmates.

"These are civil rights activists that would like to pick the pocket of the Erie County taxpayer to provide hotel rooms for prisoners," Erie County Executive Chris Collins (R) said of the lawsuit last November.

The holding center recently had three inmate suicides in a three-month span.

According to Poloncarz, the Collins' administration spent $400,000 on a Washington, D.C. law firm to help the county fight the lawsuit. The comptroller also said the county spent several hundred thousand dollars on overtime and other related expenses to spruce up the holding center in the weeks leading up to a federal inspection in late March.

"The division of buildings and grounds has already spent 85 percent of its budget for overtime this year, and it was basically spent in a two-week period in which people were offered overtime to go over and clean the holding center and correctional facility," Poloncarz said. "I was told there was mold and mildew on the walls, and they were told, just paint over it, so when the inspectors some in a few days, they don't see it. That's silly."

Additionally, Poloncarz said county employees, including the county attorney, spent significant time and energy fighting the lawsuit. He estimated that the total expenses could be approaching one million dollars.

The Collins' administration referred all of our questions about the expenses and mediation process to Erie County Attorney Cheryl Green, whom we had to question by phone because she was out of town attending a conference.

REPORTER: Couldn't you have saved the taxpayers lots of money and just submitted to formal mediation early on?

GREEN: We had asked for formal mediation early on. And certainly we have to do everything we can to protect that taxpayers in this litigation. Once the United States Department of Justice commenced litigation against the County of Erie, every step we've taken along the way along the way has been to protect the taxpayer.

REPORTER: If these allegations by [the Justice Department] are baseless, then why the need for mediation?

GREEN: First of all, I continue to believe that the allegations by the Department of Justice are baseless. Nonetheless, I am also cognizant of the fact that it's not appropriate to move forward and expend taxpayer dollars if there may be some mutually agreeable resolution to the allegations.

In other words, Green believes mediation would save the taxpayers money. And she refused to characterize the mediation as a change in legal strategy.

REPORTER: The county attorney said they were willing to mediate from the beginning and this was really the federal government that didn't want them to do that. Do you believe that?

POLONCARZ: No, I don't believe that. The information I had is, they took a hard line, and it wasn't until recently that the county executive finally said, 'enough is enough.'

Copyright 2010 WGRZ