The Rice Plan for Rural New York

District Attorney Kathleen Rice’s Rural Plan for

New York’s Office of the Attorney General

Our state is facing historic budget shortfalls, making the issues facing rural New Yorkers more
difficult to address than at any point in our history. It has never been more important for
government to be accessible to its constituents regardless of where they live. While our Attorney
General’s office has led the nation in cracking down on crime, corruption and waste in recent
years, shrinking budgets will require smart new ideas about how to marshal the resources and
powers of the office to protect New Yorkers in every corner of the state.

Though crime rates in rural New York are increasing in many areas, the Attorney General’s
office is suffering the same budget cuts as other government offices, and its staff has decreased
through limited hiring and attrition. Moving forward, innovation and efficiency must be our
watchwords, and the next Attorney General will have to be as smart a fiscal manager as an
attorney.

A well-run Attorney General’s office can benefit rural New Yorkers the most, ensuring that the
distance between citizens and their counsel becomes smaller, not wider, and that help is always
at hand. The following is Kathleen Rice’s proposal for guaranteeing that all rural New Yorkers
have access to the protection of the Attorney General’s office – and that their issues and concerns
are a top priority for the state’s top lawyer.

The Rice Plan for Rural New York

Creating and maintaining an open channel between every community in New York and the
Attorney General’s office is the key to determining resource priorities, stopping criminals, and
helping prevent laws from being broken in the first place. Here are six creative and cost-
effective steps for staying in touch with and protecting rural New Yorkers during tough times:

1) Create a “311 line” for legal help in rural areas. The 311 line used to connect residents
to city services in some large New York cities is unused in rural areas. The Attorney
General’s office can use the number in rural areas to connect to rural New Yorkers,
creating an immediate point of access to legal services for under-served communities.
Existing employees can be redeployed to staff the seven-day-a-week call center. This line
can also serve as an easy way for New Yorkers with information about illegal activity to
make a report or file a government fraud complaint – potentially saving taxpayers’
money.
 2) Appoint a Senior Deputy Attorney General for Rural Affairs (AGRA), a top-level
official reporting directly to the Attorney General, who can stay vigilantly focused on the
priorities of rural New York and how the Attorney General’s office can best use its
resources to help.

3) Appoint representatives – elected and unelected – from each region of the state to serve
on a Rural Affairs Advisory Council to work with the Senior Deputy Attorney General
for Rural Affairs and to help guide the work of the Attorney General’s office in rural
areas.

4) Reach out with a rural public education program, deploying existing employees to
community meetings and schools across the state to provide New Yorkers with the tools
to protect themselves against consumer fraud, and to engage citizens in the fight against
government waste and abuse.

5) Staff regional offices with qualified local applicants and provide internships for local
students to help retain talented young people in our rural communities. Brain drain and
population loss are major barriers to a thriving and healthy rural New York economy; it’s
critical that the Office of the Attorney General, like every New York government office,
extend as much opportunity to rural New Yorkers as possible.

6) Visiting all 62 counties of New York State. The Rice Plan for Rural New York includes
her pledge to personally visit each of New York’s 62 counties during her first year in
office.

The Rice Plan for Rural New York is the first in a series of policy proposals offered by Nassau
County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, a Democrat exploring a bid for New York State Attorney
General.

Kathleen Rice is the District Attorney of Nassau County, a diverse suburban

community of 1.3 million people located on Long Island, New York.
Kathleen’s innovative, tough and smart-on-crime initiatives have garnered the
two-term District Attorney critical acclaim and national attention.

Kathleen shocked the political establishment in 2005 with her upset defeat of
a 31-year Republican incumbent, making her the first woman elected DA in
Long Island's history. Since taking office, Kathleen has defined what it means
to be a modern prosecutor, proving that law enforcement officials can and
must be both tough and smart on crime.

Kathleen has won national acclaim on programs like CBS’s 60 Minutes and
ABC’s PrimeTime for her tough but smart, community-based initiatives
cracking down on drunk drivers, drug networks, sexual predators, violent
criminals and white-collar fraud. Her solutions have led to crime reductions
in Nassau County and her fights against Medicaid fraud and public corruption
have led to sweeping government reform.

Kathleen overwhelmingly won re-election in 2009 and is exploring a potential bid for New York State Attorney
General. Prior to her tenure as Nassau County’s chief law enforcement official, Kathleen was a former New York
City homicide prosecutor and an award-winning Assistant United States Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice.
She is 45 years old and a resident of Garden City, New York.