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For Rice, it's broom for change

Joye Brown

August 1, 2006

The question for Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice yesterday was: Are you the witch critics say you are?

It's a fair question, considering the firestorm Nassau's newbie DA has generated in just seven months in office.

She's been slammed for hiring her sister-in-law for a big-salaried job. Slammed for firing longtime assistant district attorneys. Slammed for reorganizing the office.

Slammed by the New York Women's Bar Association, no less, for being anti-woman for making a group of mothers in her office choose between full- and part-time work. (Rice says a planned new division will let parents, male and female, apply for flex-time hours.)

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But she's been slammed hardest of all for being "aggressive," "overly aggressive," "mean," and a few other witchy-like adjectives, too.

Rice - some might be surprised to learn - didn't get mean when I tossed her the question. She was quick, instead, to toss back two of her own.

"Why is it that a strong woman with strong ideas is always portrayed that way?

"Would people be criticizing the style of a man under the same circumstances?"

But Rice, 41, who replaced 30-year incumbent Denis Dillon as district attorney, was just warming up.

"If critics can't attack the substance of what you are doing, they attack the style. And when you challenge a very insular community about which people feel inherently protective, it takes a strong person to do that.

"I am not going to deny that I have a strong personality and that I take seriously the job that I have ... I have bold ideas and I am trying to build consensus around those ideas so they can be put into action."

She does not apologize for getting off to a rocket-powered, if rugged, start. She's had no honeymoon with a generation of judges, ADAs and defense attorneys who grew up professionally, and worked comfortably, with an office Rice received a public mandate to change.

"People were waiting to see what kind of a leader I was going to be," she said. "When they realized I was not going to maintain the status quo, that's when the knives came out."

Rice, who had never worked as a DA before, readily admits to being a novice.

"I think I have gotten better at this job," she said, "but I know for sure that I will continue to get better."

So far, she's done away with plea bargains unless her office agrees to the sentence, and created a special unit to deal with DWI cases. Her final reorganization of the DA's office is in the works, too.

Coming attractions?

The biggest, by far, is that Rice intends to make good on promises to root out political corruption in Nassau, just as Suffolk County DA Thomas Spota is doing.

"I am going to be aggressive, the most aggressive with these investigations," she said. "Tom Spota has been there for five years and has had time to develop corruption cases. These are not cases sitting on your doorstep. You have to work them. You have to prove the cases."

But Rice counseled the public to have patience. "It doesn't happen overnight," she said, "but it does happen."

And with that, Rice went back to her broom.

Not the one critics are so certain she rides. The one she's using to sweep her office - one of the last vestiges of Nassau's old-boy style of government - into the 21st century.

joye.brown@newsday.com