ITHACA, N.Y. — Victor Kessler was appointed Ithaca City Attorney on Wednesday by Common Council in a unanimous vote. Kessler first joined the ranks of City Hall as an assistant city attorney in September 2021. His appointment to city attorney ends a seven-month long search to fill a key leadership position in the City of Ithaca. Kessler will now assume an important role advising the city on a range of complex challenges, as well as overseeing legal cases brought by or against the city. For instance, the city’s landmark public safety reform plan, Reimagining Public Safety, is yet to implement an unarmed responder program. In an effort to address the area’s growing homeless population, the city is piloting a “sanctioned encampment zone,” where individuals are now allowed to live outside. But Kessler declined to comment on any specific city initiative or issue. “This is where I’m gonna start ‘no commenting,’” he said in an interview.He steps into the role at a time when the denizens of City Hall are still adjusting to the transition to a city manager form of government. Administrative authority in the city transitioned from the hands of an elected mayor to an appointed city manager at the start of 2024. That shift has come with structural and procedural changes, including a revamped city budget planning process.That transition is what Kessler said helped convince him to apply for the city attorney job. A self-described “government dork,” Kessler said that “there was something that was just really exciting about getting a new government structure off the ground.”He added, “There were a lot of new and exciting perspectives about what the government is, and what it should be, and how we should be doing things. And I really felt like I had something to contribute.”Kessler attended the University of Chicago, graduating with a B.A. in Anthropology in 2011, before attending Georgetown University Law Center, where he graduated with a J.D. in 2015. He moved to Ithaca from the Washington, D.C. area as a “trailing spouse” in summer 2020 when his wife accepted a job as a professor at Cornell University. Up until working for the city, Kessler spent about six years working in private firms. Kessler said his transition to local government was a long time coming. He said he had paid down his law school loans working in private practice, which notoriously pays more than public sector jobs. With the burden of law school loans lifted, Kessler said he was thinking about “what I wanted to do as opposed to what I needed to do.”“The idea of using my skills, such as they are, to help make the city a better place was just really, really appealing,” Kessler said. “I like the idea of being invested in my community.”Although he claims he wasn’t initially convinced to apply for the city attorney position. Kessler said he normally doesn’t like the spotlight. He said he prefers projects that might have him “digging through property records from 100 years ago trying to figure out some little arcane bit of city history.”The city attorney is a highly public-facing position, serving as the official legal advisor to the city administration and Common Council. It was a role that Kessler said he became more comfortable with as he served as the acting city attorney over the last seven months.The vacancy Kessler has now filled was created when former City Attorney Ari Lavine stepped down at the end of 2023. Lavine became the object of intense criticism from city workers and union officials for an allegedly uncompromising and harsh style of negotiating labor contracts with the city’s bargaining units. In November 2022, city workers and union officials appeared before Common Council, decrying the city’s elected officials for allowing wages to stagnate and insisting that Lavine was an obstacle to progress at the bargaining table. The demonstration delayed the council from voting on the city’s annual budget for a week. Lavine, who served as city attorney for 12 years, would maintain that he was following the negotiating goals set out for him by the city administration, and likened the way he was treated to a “mob attack.”Asked how he considered the conflict when he applied for the City Attorney position, Kessler said “it was hard to watch [Lavine] go through that,” adding that he knows Lavine well and respects him. But Kessler continued that “our unions were feeling frustrated and they absolutely have the right to comment publicly on what they felt they were experiencing.”“I think when it comes to tricky situations where people have strong feelings and disagree on things, I am hoping that I can approach things with a level of humility and ask others to do the same,” Kessler said. “And to avoid that kind of situation. But if it happens, that’s a risk of the position, and that’s one that I accept at the end of the day.”However, Kessler says he enters the city attorney role with excitement. “I have been lucky enough for the past three years to wake up and be excited about coming to work, and excited about working with people on all these really important issues,” Kessler. “It’s a really cool time in the history of the city.”First published by The Ithaca Voice.