Washington, DC – Attorney General Karl A. Racine today released his Fiscal Year 2016 Budget proposal, which would leverage the office’s ability to recover funds for District residents in order to implement four initiatives that voters in all wards of the city embraced when they elected him to be the District of Columbia’s first elected Attorney General.

“In the District’s election for the city’s first independent chief legal officer, voters spoke clearly in support of more consumer protection and community outreach, better enforcement of laws designed to preserve affordable housing, reforms to our juvenile-justice system designed to strengthen public safety, and a fairer and more transparent system of government contracting,” Attorney General Racine said. “This Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Submission uses a fraction of the dollars we bring to the District to make our city better, safer, and stronger.”

This is the first time that an Attorney General of the District has submitted a budget proposal for the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to both the Mayor and, separately, the Council; previously, the office’s budget request was made through the Mayor. The proposal would re-establish a Consumer Protection Fund for the District. The fund would be backed with a portion of what OAG will raise this year through settlements in consumer-protection suits brought by OAG attorneys.

“We believe this proposal is a win for the residents of the District and for our city’s bottom line,” Attorney General Racine said. “Even though our local budget, at $56 million, represents much less than 1 percent of the District’s overall local budget, this year we’ve already recovered more than $21 million from a settlement with Standard & Poor’s and expect to bring in as much as $90 million more in a settlement with online travel companies.”

OAG – like the offices of other state attorneys general from around the nation – pursues litigation every year against wrongdoers seeking to deceive and defraud consumers. Many other state attorneys general have consumer-protection funds to offset the costs of such litigation. Settlements from these cases annually bring the District millions in revenue it would not otherwise receive.

The proposal would give OAG the authority to spend $16.5 million from the new fund in Fiscal Year 2016 – a fraction of the $80-110 million the office will recover in two major settlements in this fiscal year alone. This investment would enable OAG to take more of a leadership role in multistate consumer-protection cases – leading to even larger shares for the District in those settlements in the future.

The additional funds would support Attorney General Racine’s efforts in four major initiative areas:

• Consumer Protection and Community Outreach;
• Affordable Housing Protection and Enforcement;
• Public Safety and Criminal Justice, Protecting Children and Families, and Juvenile Rehabilitation; and
• Protecting Taxpayers, Workers, and Enforcing Honest Government. 

“Chief Deputy Attorney General Natalie Ludaway and I have substantial experience managing law firm budgets, and we know top-flight legal organizations must have the resources to effectuate their clients’ objectives,” Attorney General Racine said. “In framing this budget, we sought to be self-sufficient and cost-effective, and we did not want to take resources away from other vital programs. This budget achieves that.”

The Mayor’s proposed Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Support Act did not include the authority for the Consumer Protection Fund or other OAG requests. As the District’s first-ever elected Attorney General, Attorney General Racine has asked the Council to consider the first-ever separate budget proposal from an Attorney General.

Attorney General Racine testified on the proposal before the DC Council’s Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan R. McDuffie, earlier today. A copy of his testimony is attached.

Please see attachments for more information.