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Kessler Goes Before Congress Today for Spot on U.S. Board
By Gina Passarella
November 19, 2009
The Legal Intelligencer
Alan Kessler's Senate confirmation hearing today may not be as closely followed or contentious as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's, but the board he's trying to keep a seat on is facing substantial, national challenges that will keep the Duane Morris partner's docket quite busy.
Kessler is going before the Senate Finance and Government Relations Committee today for a hearing on his nomination to a second term on the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service.
He said he expects this process to go much more smoothly than the first time around when he was appointed by President Clinton in 1999 and a Republican Congress slowed up confirmation hearings for more than a year. The fact that he received a hearing this time around only about a month after President Obama nominated him to the post shows this process would be quicker, he said.
Kessler's first appointment was for a nine-year term with one holdover year, which concludes at the end of December. The positions have since changed, and his second term would be for seven years. Kessler has served as vice chairman of the board for three years and chairman for a year.
Though he said the position requires "a tremendous amount of time," Kessler said, "When you get a call telling you the president wants you to do this, it's hard to say, 'Jeez I'll be busy.'"
Serving on the board will be a great challenge, Kessler said. The service lost $2.4 billion in the last quarter alone.
"The Postal Service, unlike other federal agencies, doesn't require or doesn't exist on congressional appropriations," Kessler said.
It exists through selling postage and the service is facing a huge drop in volume as people send "letters" via e-mail and pay their bills online rather than mailing them in, he said.
"It's extraordinarily interesting," Kessler said. "For a lawyer that litigates and does government relations, being in a position like this, overseeing a $70 billion-a-year enterprise, I've learned as much from this" as anything else.
The problems facing the board, and Kessler's experience dealing with them, are nothing new. When he first started, the Postal Service had to handle losing one of its biggest facilities in New York during the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001. Then there was anthrax. Then there was Hurricane Katrina and the damage it did to mail delivery system in that region and now there is another recession putting pressure on the institution.
Kessler said the board is working on ways to make the Postal Service healthier. That includes looking at accounting methods for retiree health benefits and moving from a six-day delivery system to a five-day system.
"We're trying to make this a healthy institution and do so in the face of really tremendous challenges," he said.
Kessler has been involved in a number of national political campaigns, most recently serving as the Pennsylvania finance chairman for the Hillary for President campaign in 2008.
This article originally appeared in The Legal Intelligencer and is republished here with permission from law.com.
