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COLUMBIA -- County officials are threatening to sue Gov. Mark Sanford and the state's prison system over a quota system to accept inmates from counties.

A spokesman for Sanford and the prison system said inmate quotas aren't new and the prison system was responding to a sheriff's complaint in creating the new numbers.

Under the new quotas, the state's prisons will take as many as 24 male inmates a week from Greenville County, which has sent more male prisoners to the state than any other county in recent years, prison records show.

In fact, the prison system's new quotas accept more inmates per week from Greenville County than any other. Twenty-four counties are now limited to sending three inmates or fewer a week.

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Prisons Director Jon Ozmint couldn't be reached for comment, and a spokeswoman said through e-mail he prefers to deal with the counties about the matter and not the news media.

"Quotas have been assigned and used in admitting inmates to SCDC for several decades," the agency said in a statement. "Too often, those formulas were set arbitrarily, resulting in unfair treatment of some counties."

County officials see it differently.

"Our phones have been ringing off the hook from irate county officials," said Kathy Williams, assistant director of the South Carolina Association of Counties. "It is not their responsibility to keep these inmates once they have been sentenced to more than 90 days.

"It's costing these counties an enormous amount of money to keep these state prisoners. Local jails are overcrowded anyway. It's really shifting the department's responsibility."

Mike Cone, executive director of the counties group, said a number of counties are prepared to proceed with a lawsuit. He said the prison system, which is in the governor's Cabinet, is required by law to take all inmates who are sentenced to prison.

"We're trying to work things out so the counties don't have to sue the governor's office," he said.

Sen. Mike Fair, chairman of the Senate Corrections Committee, said he doesn't think Ozmint can legally defend his position.

"I cannot find any wiggle room at all for the department," he said.

Sanford's spokesman Joel Sawyer said the governor is "aware of the situation."

"Our understanding is that director Ozmint was simply trying to standardize something that has been the operating procedure for as long as anyone can remember," he said.