The Schwarzenegger administration is indignant that the endorsement by inmates' attorneys of the state's plan to reduce prison population ignores everything that it feels is wrong with the plan.

Earlier this month, the attorneys said they were happy with the plan because it satisfies a three-judge panel's edict that the population of the state's 33 adult prisons be slashed to 137.5 percent of design capacity - approximately 40,000 inmates - within two years.

In a reply filed Friday with the panel, attorneys for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate complain that the inmates' attorneys "do not acknowledge (the administration's) opposition to the prisoner release order, or (its) inability to meet the three-judge court's order without (court-ordered) waivers (of existing law) and affirmative changes in state law." Also in Friday's reply, the administration once again makes it clear it will appeal the panel's final reduction order to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The three-judge panel, formed under provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act, ruled in August that substandard health care in the adult prisons violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that overcrowding is the primary reason.