by Tiffany Razzano
Krisel, a resident of Rockville Centre since 1986, was appointed to the village attorney position in 1996, after representing the village through the law firm Seward & Seward since she joined the company in 1993. Deciding it was time for a change, she put in her resignation, her last day with the village was on June 22.
"I felt that I had represented the village," she said. "I represented the village beginning August of 1993 and I went to work directly for the village in November of 1996. I was ready for the change and the position had changed a lot. There was a lack of harmony on the Board of Trustees and the meetings were much more contentious. I felt the timing was right for me to leave."
With the support of her husband, Stan Berke, and three children, she had already decided to leave the village when the Nassau County Attorney, Lorna Goodman, approached Krisel about the opening on her executive legal staff. The two, who had known each other through their work on the Nassau County Board of Ethics, eventually settled on a start date for Krisel of Sept. 22. She was then able to enjoy the summer off, spending time with her children and vacationing in Montauk. "I had been working constantly for 25 years," she said. "I never had time off before."
She also spent her summer concentrating on her volunteer position as the co-president of the southern Nassau branch of the National Council of Jewish Women, a not-for-profit group that concentrates on advocacy and community service. This year, the group celebrates its 85th anniversary, so Krisel has been hard at work planning not only celebrations of the milestone, but also a major community service project held in conjunction with other chapters of the organization.
Krisel is incredibly excited about her new position with the County. She was brought in to work on several specific projects at first, including finding a comprehensive way to train all of the nearly 100 Nassau County lawyers and set up Continuing Legal Education (CLE) workshops for them, something she has experience doing from her work at the Nassau Academy of Law, the CLE arm of the Nassau County Bar Association. She will also work on an amendment to the Nassau County human rights law, which will deal with housing discrimination by landlords and realtors.
"I'm a big proponent of affordable housing and ensuring that there is going to be housing for our children to live in," Krisel said. "One of the ironies I see as a parent now, is that we spend so much money here in Rockville Centre on school taxes, to give [our kids] such a great education, and we hear over and over that when they graduate from school college they can't come back here and live, because they can't afford it."
Her new position reunites her with the passion she discovered she had for public interest law after joining the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) when she was a sophomore, political science major at SUNY Buffalo. "[At that meeting,] I encountered consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the founder of NYPIRG, and experienced the advocacy that his organization was engaged in to protect the environment, to protect consumers, and to hold politicians accountable," she said. "I decided that I, too, would become a public interest lawyer."
After graduating from SUNY Buffalo with her law degree in 1980, she worked towards this goal, representing indigent children and criminals in New York City and seniors in Massachusetts. She also taught law at Hofstra Law School. Her new position with the County will allow her to work with law school students from Hofstra and Touro Law School in housing discrimination clinics. She loved teaching and is looking forward to this aspect of her new position.
In 1993, William Seward asked her to join Seward & Seward, his family law firm, to represent the village. Her husband, always supportive, convinced her to give the position a chance. "From the very first file that Mr. Seward handed me," she said, "I fell in love with municipal law, with its intricacies, with its range of issues, and with its substance. There's never a dull moment when you represent a municipality and you can always be sure that business will be brisk."
Then, in 1996, Village Administrator Tony Cancellieri, Mayor Eugene Murray and the Board of Trustees at the time -- Peter Brady, Gene Yourch, Peter Rubin and Bud Cosgrove -- created an in-house position of village attorney for Krisel. Krisel calls the position both an "honor" and an "amazing journey," as she feels privileged to have been able to work with a group of "brilliant and gifted Department Heads."
"The hardest part of my decision to leave the village was giving up my office in Village Hall, where I was surrounded every day by Monica Derr, [the village Board of Trustees secretary,] Mary Rohrs, [the mayor's secretary,] Laura Bauer, [my assistant,] Ron Wasson, [village administrator,] and Mayor Murray," she said. "We laughed a lot, and sometimes we cried, but through it all we worked as hard as we could to keep the village running, to keep our residents safe, and to provide a productive work environment for our employees."
At a Sept. 28 dinner held in Krisel's honor, Bauer told her, "I'm sure I speak for many village employees when I say we miss your smile, your laughter, your warm personality and your incredible knowledge on every subject."
"If anyone deserves to be honored for hard work, dedication, and, in my opinion, [being] the best village attorney Rockville Centre will ever see, it's Martha," Bauer said. "I had the privilege and pleasure of working as Martha's assistant for nine years. When you work with someone for that long, you learn a lot about their character. Martha is one of the hardest working people I have ever met. She completely immersed herself in whatever project she had to tackle -- and trust me, there were many -- and did the best job she possibly could, no matter how long it took."
Krisel added, "With few exceptions, I loved every minute of my job at the village... For me, it was the position of a life time, where I was able to raise three children just three traffic lights from home."
Despite all her career accomplishments, her family -- her husband and children, Nina, 19, Jeremy, 16, and Brittany, 10, Berke -- always come first and she wants to stress how supportive they have been of her over the years.
