The Capitol Connection Show 1332, 2013 August 9

Welcome to the Capital Connection, a weekly program questioning New York State leaders
on a variety of issues.
Your host is Dr. Alan Shartock, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University
at Albany.
Distribution for the Capital Connection is made possible with the help of New York State
United Teachers, representing professionals in education and health care, online at nycut.org.
Welcome to the Capital Connection, I'm Alan Shartock.
Joining us today is Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice.
Rice, co-chair of the New Moreland Act Commission, begun by Governor Andrew Cuomo and Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman, was recently named President of the District Attorney's Association.
Rice was a Democratic candidate for Attorney General in 2010.
Kathleen Rice, really.
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us.
Thank you for having me.
So what's it like to be a district attorney?
I mean, you know, we think of, you know, Tom Dewey and people like that, racquet buster's
crime busters, is that you?
That still is what the job is.
I have to tell you, Alan, it is the greatest job that you can have in law enforcement, I
think, as a lawyer.
I was fortunate enough to become the first woman DA ever on Long Island and to do it at
a time when law enforcement was really going in a much more community-based direction,
has enabled me to do some really innovative things in Nassau County that we've been able
to export, you know, throughout the state of New York.
And it's really changed the way people look at DA's offices and their relationship with
the community.
So give us an example, Kathleen Rice, of export that you put out there that other people
are now imitating.
So we did an initiative in one of our more high crime areas in the village of Hempstead
where there was a very notorious open-air drug market.
And the law enforcement year after year did the same kind of sweeps that really didn't
result in any long-term change.
We partnered with John Jay, a professor at John Jay, and we, for the first time, driven
by a DA's office, did a specific initiative that, you know, addressed the specific drug
dealers in that area, but then also engaged the community and asked the community what
they wanted for long-term success in their community.
We were very successful in large part because we did engage the community.
You know, when years passed, the community had no say in how law enforcement addressed
crime issues in their community.
And what did they want?
What they wanted was a say.
They want, because a lot of the people who commit crimes in, who were committing crimes
in this specific area, they knew.
They were their relative or their brother or their friend.
And it was just generation after generation getting caught up in this cycle of recidivism.
And what they wanted was real reform.
What they wanted was if you don't want people dealing drugs on this treat, are you going
to give them an alternative?
Are you going to set up what we did?
It was we set up a resource center where all of our social service agencies that are
already in existence are co-located.
So you can walk in off the street and say, I want to get my GED.
I need to get my driver's license so I can get a job.
I need after care for my child.
I need drug treatment.
And you can cut your way through the labyrinthian maze that very often is...
Just like a great idea.
Oh, it's fabulous.
And it's actually been implemented throughout the state through the Department of Criminal
Justice Services and the Department of Justice.
DOJ has done it on a national level.
So these are the kind of things that I try to do in my neck of the woods, addressing
problems that are, you know, endemic in so many communities across the state and across
the country to say, hey, look, we could do it here and we were successful.
You can do it as well.
Now, nothing right.
You sound and you look like a potential statewide candidate for an office.
If Andrew Cuomo runs for president and wins, would you run for governor?
You know, I have to say I never pre-ordained what I'm going to do.
I mean, you can't really ever say what you're going to do in life.
What you can do is put yourself in a position to be as effective as you can be.
It's no secret that I think that I can contribute on a much larger scale.
I ran statewide three years ago for attorney general because it was an office I felt I
could do a lot of good with.
And if an opportunity like that were to present itself in the future, I would have to see
if it was the right time.
But I certainly love New York State.
I love Long Island.
I love public service.
And I do think that there may be an opportunity in the future to contribute on a larger scale.
But I just know has the cards.
No insult intended.
But I don't hear a hint of a Long Island accent in your face.
What is that?
I maybe it's, you know, the Catholic grammar school upbringing with very strict teachers and
the nuns.
I don't know.
I don't know.
This is the way everyone in my family sounds.
I think it's Long Island, but I guess there are different accents from different areas.
Let me go to the crux of the matter, which is the Moral and that commission.
The governor has had his countertemp with the state legislature.
I didn't give him what he wanted in terms of cleaning up Albany.
And he said, okay, you're not going to do that.
I'm going to appoint a Borland commission, which he has the power to do.
He did that with Eric Schneiderman's help, the attorney general, who deputized everybody
on the Moral and that.
Ron, he reminds me of Matt Dillon, you know, he would go outside of Dodge and say, you
can't arrest me.
You're outside of Dodge.
He's a flip over his badge and say, yes, but I'm a US.
Deputy US Marshal also.
So the Moral and that commission has not won, but three chairs.
Sometimes when there's the fused authority, nobody has authority.
So tell us about how that's all being organized.
So there are five commissioners that were chosen by the governor.
And there were in order, I guess, as organizational, there were set up as three co-chairs.
So I'm one of the co-chairs.
Bill Fitzpatrick, who's the DA in Syracuse on Indogga County, is the other co- one other
co-chairman.
He's a Republican.
OK.
And Milton Williams is a former federal prosecutor who is now in private practice, a very accomplished
attorney in private practice now.
So the three of us really kind of set the tone.
We are the ones that sign off on subpoenas that are going to be issued.
We run the meetings that we have with the rest of the commissioners.
And we try to gain consensus in terms of where the investigation is going to go.
I've taken that role very seriously.
I'm involved at a very deep level because, for something to say, I give a lot of credit
to the governor for setting this up the way that he did.
Because involving the attorney general in the way that he did really distinguishes this
commission from other commissions in the past.
Yeah.
And then Kathleen, he hasn't always had the easiest of relationships with this particular
attorney general.
So the fact that he has, I agree with you, shows some either maturation or development
or something.
It shows a great, I believe, confidence in the commissioners that he chose number one.
And number two, a desire to, in my opinion, what the mission of this commission is, is
to get government back on the side of the people and not on the side of the elected and
connected.
That's where it is.
Now, Kathleen, right.
Are you having success with your fellow commissioners?
In other words, are you all keeping your eye on the same ball?
The commission is very clear in terms of what we feel our mission is.
The primary mission, we believe, is to expose the problems that exist in our government and
our political system that has led to a really historic crisis and confidence on behalf of
all New Yorkers in their government.
Could you be a little more specific?
Well, people, their confidence in their elected officials in New York state is at an all-time
low.
It also, you look at statistics of how people approve of what their elected officials are doing
in Washington.
It just seems to be this general apathy, voter apathy, but also anger that government
doesn't, isn't working for the people anymore.
It's only working for the government.
Okay, so where do we go?
I'm sorry.
So where do we go?
We are going to look everywhere.
We are going to unturn every rock.
We're going to follow the money.
We're going to follow the money wherever it goes.
There is a corrosive effect that money has on politics and as an extension government.
And what we need is to get the government back on the side of the people as opposed to
being an institution that helps elected and connected people.
Yeah, this legislature down the hill from where we're talking right now is for sale.
We know that.
There are cocktail parties.
Everybody shows up for them.
The lobbyists show up and get their checkbooks out.
And what, we'd have to be dumb not to figure out that people, as I think John R. Abuckle
once said, get what they pay for.
And or the golden rule.
He has those, she was the gold rules.
But the governor earlier had set up an ethics board known as J. Cope, which was supposed
to do a lot of what you guys are looking at now and hasn't exactly distinguished itself.
So now he goes and he appoints you guys.
He's got $20 million in his own campaign account.
Are you going to be afraid to follow all the money?
No matter where it leads.
There is no question that we're going to follow the money wherever it goes without fear
or favor.
And I remember a lot of the commissioners are elected DAs across the state from both political
parties.
And they have no boss.
And no boss, but to follow what our ethical obligation is as DAs and as commissioners
on the moral commission, which is to do what's right.
We are working for the people of this state, not for any independent elected official or
body.
And look, that may be why there's some fear of people who are in positions of power have
fear about this commission.
This is not a witch hunt.
We are going to follow the money wherever it goes.
So we'll give you what we said that.
So now give us an example of where the money might go.
Well, there are a number of different areas where you where it shows the corrosive effect
of money.
Well, first of all, we can talk about the board of elections.
And this is within the executive order that created the Morlin Commission.
It gave us a pretty broad agenda in terms of what we're going to look into.
So we're looking into the board of elections.
And are they really as effective a regulatory agency, which is what they're supposed to be
as they can be?
And we're looking at the effect of lobbying.
We're looking at the effect of campaign finance.
Should there be a public finance system similar to the one that New York City has across
New York state?
Should we come out with that rule that there should be or that recommendation that there
should be public financing, the legislator is still going to take it to hand in front
of its nosing a man.
There's no question.
And my goal is not to have this commission issue a report that's going to sit on a shelf
and gain dust as reports in the past have.
And I think that our commission is in a unique position for a number of reasons.
We have subpoena power so we can get documents that have never been made public before into
our hands so we can look at the corrosive effect of money from a perspective that has never
been seen before.
We're going to be able to do this.
You're not staff to do this.
Oh, yeah.
We have 25 very involved commissioners.
We are getting a lot of pro bono legal work done for the commission.
We're hiring staff.
We are going to have the resources that we need to complete our mission.
But you know, this is one of the issues.
And as a prosecutor, I can tell you that the laws regarding, for instance, bribery,
very, very poor on the state level.
We don't have the tools that federal prosecutors have.
As my mother used to say, accidentally on purpose, the state legislature passes laws where
you know, which don't mean anything.
Well, you know, it's hard to ask a legislature to load the gun that's being pointed at their
own hands.
So that's why I see if I use one word, which is the goal of this commission, its exposure
to expose to the public.
Everyone knows what people, what the, what laws, you know, bribery, they understand that.
But those arrests are isolated.
They're always seen as one offs, so to speak.
Oh, that's just one bad apple.
It's just another bad apple.
But what I think people need to see is that it actually might be the vine that all these
apples are on.
That's actually the problem.
And that's why I think the exposure and having public hearings as many public hearings
as possible so that people in the state of New York can understand, wait, that's not illegal.
That is not illegal.
That activity is not illegal.
Well, it should be, or at least there should be, there should be more transparency.
So the goal is exposure and then coming up with a series of proposals that we can pass
here and getting the legislature to recognize, which I think most of them do, that things
need to change.
Government is not working for the people anymore.
It works for the elected and the connected people, but it doesn't work for the regular
person on the street.
But so much, Kathleen, so much of this is loaded.
I mean, we have a DA here in Albany who I like very much, David Soars.
He had some state trooper investigators in his office.
They took the state troopers out of there.
They've always bled the Albany DA because after all, that's where all of this stuff should
be prosecuted.
But it doesn't because if you have a small office with no real staff, that's the kind of recommendation
you might want to make.
It's going to be, our mandate is very broad, as you can see from the executive order,
which is another reason why I hope the public has faith in this process.
We have a December 1st deadline.
We're hoping to get most of this done before then.
I know that sounds very ambitious.
Where there's going to be work that we have to do going into next year.
But our goal is to expose this system for what it is in a way that people have never seen
before.
Okay.
We're delighted to have Kathleen Rice with us, who is the Nassauk County Fighting District
Attorney.
I wanted to ask you this.
What's the reaction of the legislature to you guys?
You said some people are afraid I'm presuming that the legislature is the target here or
in large part the target.
The legislature is not the only target.
There's no question about that.
I mean, the Board of Elections has nothing to do with the legislature.
A while ago, I begged to differ with you there.
I think that the Board of Elections, with its Democratic and Republican components, are
heavily influenced by who Shelley Silver is and who Dean Skello said is.
So I think that's all part and parcel of one system.
Well, that's what we're going to expose is exactly how effective an institution like
the Board of Elections is.
Is it full of just political patronage or is it an actual regulatory body that is ensuring
that all politicians, any candidate for public office, is playing by the rules?
But it would be unfair to say and inaccurate to say that the target of the Moral Commission
is purely the legislature.
Yes, sure.
It is a very broad mandate that we have and we are going to look everywhere.
But a lot of people think that Andrew Cuomo was so frustrated by the fact that the legislature
would not pass a campaign financing or even more open system that he appointed the Moral
and that commission.
I don't think he made any secret about that.
And so it obviously means that they have to be somewhat cooperative with you in order
to make this work.
But there are separate branches of government, which is why Eric Schneiderman's group was
called into this thing.
Obviously, you have some sense of where the problems are going to be or are already based
on your communications.
I can say that it's our, the commission's hope and what we have seen so far is that everyone
in this process wants the system to be better and is very likely to go to the legislature.
It's going to be cooperative.
That's my opinion.
I hope that the test of time bears that out.
And I think that a lot of the posturing that various elected officials have taken is
just that.
But that's what we're trying to cut through here.
People are sick and tired of hearing the political posturing.
Oh, this is what he's doing this for this reason.
This one's doing that for that reason.
People don't care about the finger pointing anymore.
They just want to know why the system doesn't work and how we can make it better.
And that's what this commission is going to do.
So when the smoke clears, is it possible we could see some indictments?
It's possible.
It's well within our mandate.
We have subpoena power.
The executive board is very clear that if we come upon any potential criminal activity that
we are to make referrals to the appropriate agencies, we are very fortunate in New York
State to have very active U.S. attorneys for U.S. attorneys throughout the state and
geographic areas.
They have been very active.
Everyone knows what Preparar has been doing in terms of looking into the legislature,
using wire taps to uncover corruption at every level.
And what my hope is at the end of this process is that it's not just one particular law
enforcement agency that can do that, that the laws are clear and that we local DAs who
have a lot of the institutional knowledge from a local standpoint have the tools that we
need to be able to police the elected officials in our own area.
Now, this is so interesting because as you just point out, there are two levels here.
There's the state level.
I think the game is loaded.
In other words, I think that the people who are on state level who have made the laws,
have made them weak on purpose as we have indicated up to now.
And then we have the feds and the feds traditionally are the ones who come in and do the policing.
So how do you, as a, as a Morlin Act Commission, deal with the federal law enforcement agencies?
We have reached out to all of them so that we can be clear about where our investigation
is going.
We don't want to affect any ongoing investigation that might be going on in any other
law enforcement agency throughout the state.
We're all trying to work cooperatively together.
I think everyone's goal is the same.
It's to root out the bad players and to make the system more transparent and more accountable
and more on the side of every regular, every day New Yorker.
So I can't speak for the U.S. Attorney's offices or the Attorney General or any individual
DA's office.
They all have the power to be conducting their own investigations.
Look, one of the reasons why this commission was brought into existence is that there was
just this constant parade of elected officials being taken out of their home early in the morning
in handcuffs.
And it got to the point where it was almost expected that every day when you'd go to get
your newspaper, you'd see one of those pictures or a perp walk on the news or in the newspaper.
And I think that's just led people to say, gosh, everyone's, they're all corrupt.
They're all corrupt.
If a democracy is going to work and be truly meaningful, if you have note, if the public
has no trust in their public officials, democracy can exist.
You have people not coming out on election day to vote because they say my vote doesn't
matter.
I'm not going to bother to be involved.
You have people just having this, you have people moving out of state saying, I don't
think this government is working the way it should be for me.
New York State is the greatest state in this country.
We have to put it on par with other governments that serve their public better.
Constituents better.
I've said, and I will continue to say that the goal of this commission is to put government
back on the side of the people and not on the side of the elected and connected.
And that is the problem that we have here.
People, regular people in the street, you pull them all the street and you say, do you
like, who's your local elected official?
I don't know.
They're all corrupt.
All of these things, Washington Stinks, I have no faith.
But if they do know them, they're more likely to like them than they are the institution.
If they know them personally, there's no question about it.
That's true.
But, you know, what do people, how do they gauge that?
How many people are able to be in a position to meet their local elected official so that
they can have that position, that can have that feeling of trust?
The problem with New York State government is there's no transparency.
The laws are porous.
They're very opaque.
They're very intentionally very difficult to enforce.
And that doesn't work for the people.
But isn't it true that when Andrew Colmo is the State Attorney General and when he
got to be governor, he said that this would be the most transparent administration in
history, do you think that's happened?
I think he has taken steps to go in that direction.
Jacob was a step in that direction.
He took a lot of power.
Why are they calling it J-Joke?
Well, that's, I don't know.
I'm not a writer.
Although it's, you know, it's a cute acronym.
But look, the prior to J-Cope, you had the Legislative Ethics Commission.
And that was routinely seen as something that was more on the side of protecting legislators
than it was enforcing laws and making sure that everyone's playing by the rules.
So I think that J-Cope was a huge step in the right direction.
Is it perfect?
No.
Do we have a perfect system?
No.
Do we even have to warn them?
The more in that commission I read, even had to warn them not to destroy any records.
What was that all about?
We, one of the first things that we did, which is very common in investigations when you
plan on issuing subpoenas as to say to all of the agencies from whom you're going to
be requesting documents.
Board of elections.
Just want to let board of elections, just want to let you know, here's a preservation
letter.
This is what we want you to preserve because we're going to be asking this for you to
produce this to us later on.
So that's a very standard.
Are you satisfied that they have a complaint?
We're getting compliance.
We are getting compliance and I'm sure if we don't, you'll know about it.
As a district attorney, when you do this kind of work and you find somebody involved in
malfeasance of one kind or another or breaking the law, this is part of you that ever says,
oh God, I wish I didn't have to do this.
No.
To be perfectly blunt.
No.
I'm the DA in a county that is seen as one of the most politically driven counties in
the country.
It was a, there was a Republican machine in Nassauk.
It was called a machine.
Ronald Reagan said it's the greatest Republican machine in the, in the world.
I mean, this is years ago.
How many years have you been in this?
I was first elected into, I took office in January of 2006.
Now remember, I can't, I was not part of any political system.
I was federal prosecutor in Philadelphia.
I moved home to my, where my nine brothers and sisters and I were raised by my parents in
Nassauk County in Garden City.
And I said, you know what?
I'm going to challenge a 30 year incumbent.
I had, they said the, the Democratic Party said we're going to give you the line, but
you got to raise your own money, run your own race, knock on your own doors.
I said, fine, just give me the line.
And I did it.
I didn't have the money.
I knocked on the doors.
I beat a 30 year incumbent, which no one told me I could do, which really reaffirmed my
faith in the system that, you know, what you can be an outsider who was well intentioned,
who's been in public service, not politics.
Did you ever suspect the people who were giving you money, caffeine?
Well, there's not much I can give people.
So it's very different.
Somebody comes up in there being accused of a crime and they think they may get a softer
deal.
They think that, you know, obviously you have a lot of power.
An enormous power.
And what I have a very tight system of controls, we vet every single check that I get from
supporters.
And if there's ever an instance where someone has a case in my county, the money goes
back because look, I don't have anything to give unlike people who are legislators or
in different executive positions.
Has anybody ever come up to you and say, hey, I give you money?
And now it's time to pay back.
No, no one has ever done that.
Amazing.
And I'll tell you that one, you know, one of the things that I talked about when I was
running was going after public corruption because in that county that I, in my home county,
there was never any prosecutions and maybe one and it was done by the feds.
So I said, that's it.
I'm not going to take money from anyone who works for me.
I am not going to let anyone do any political activity who works for me.
I'm the only politician, quote unquote, in this office because when I do these public
corruption cases, whether it's going after, you know, following the evidence that might
lead to a defendant or, I mean, a Democrat or a Republican, I want to be able to have
the public see that it is being done without fear or favor and is being done because we're
just following the evidence, regardless of the political party of the target.
Well, Kathleen Rice, let me just say congratulations on everything you have done.
It's been an amazing career.
Our guest has been Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, president of the District
Attorney's Association and co-chair of the Morlin Act Commission.
Kathleen Rice, come back again and tell us how it's going.
I would love to Alan.
Thank you so much for having me.
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