Civic Involvement and Politics
Rice has served from 1999 to 2000 as the president of the Tavern Hall Club, a not-for-profit organization in Kingston, RI dedicated to the preservation of the historic (1738) Elisha Reynolds House as a community meeting place and social center. He has also served as the President of the University Club of URI from 1995 to 1996. He was elected in 2007 to the board of directors and in 2008 as treasurer of the Edmund Rice (1638) Association, a genealogical and family history association that meets annually in Sudbury, Massachusetts. In 2011, Rice was nominated by Bruce Sundlun and appointed by Lincoln Chafee as a Rhode Island Commodore.
Prior to election to the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 2008, Rice served as an appointed member of a number of governmental commissions, including the Conservation Commission of South Kingstown from 1992 to 2008. He chaired that commission from 1998 to 2008. Also prior to election, he was appointed by the Speaker of the RI House of Representatives, to the Legislative Commission on Aquaculture Development (1995–1998), to the Legislative Commission to Develop and Coordinate a Collaborative Effort to Formulate a Restoration Plan for the North Cape Barge Oil Spill (1999), and as Legislative Commissioner proxy to meetings of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (1999–2000).
In 2008, upon the decision of incumbent Rep. John Patrick Shanley (D-South Kingstown) not to run for a fifth term in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, Rice ran and was challenged by Republican James K. Haldeman for the open seat. In the election held on November 4, 2008, Rice defeated Haldeman by 57.5% to 42.5%, carrying each of the district's five precincts.
During the 2009 legislative session, Rice served on the House Committee on Separation of Powers and Government Oversight. In the 2010 session, he served on the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, and the House committees on Separation of Powers, Government Oversight, and Constituent Services, as well as the Special House Commission to Study the Structure and Workings of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation.
Rice was defeated for reelection by Spencer E. Dickinson in the September 14, 2010 Democratic Primary by a margin of 52.8-47.2%. Rice was targeted for defeat by the Rhode Island Labor Movement after voting to cut pension benefits for workers.
In 2013 Rice was appointed by Governor Chafee and received confirmation by the Rhode Island Senate to serve a three-year term on the Rhode Island Marine Fisheries Council.
Read more about this topic: Michael A. Rice
Famous quotes containing the words civic, involvement and/or politics:
“But look what we have built ... low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.... Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums.... Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“Not only do our wives need support, but our children need our deep involvement in their lives. If this period [the early years] of primitive needs and primitive caretaking passes without us, it is lost forever. We can be involved in other ways, but never again on this profoundly intimate level.”
—Augustus Y. Napier (20th century)
“The Germans—once they were called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, the Germans distrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things—Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles was, I fear, the end of German philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)