Dick Ravitch, a great American patriot and a good friend, died on June 25. Best known for saving New York City from bankruptcy in 1975 and reinvigorating that city’s transit system in 1979, Dick and I got to know each other when he was Lieutenant Governor of New York and I was special advisor to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. What we had in common was deep concern about the future of public services provided by state and local governments, so Dick asked me to join a commission on that subject chaired by him and Paul Volcker. During a tour of states, he heard the then-State-Treasurer of California refer to me as “the devil” simply because of my efforts to prevent dire consequences to classrooms from financial legerdemain by state pension funds. At that point Dick was more concerned about the consequences to states of excessive spending on Medicaid but he turned more attention to pension matters, learned the math, and played helpful roles in resolving pension issues in Detroit and Puerto Rico. (I wish I could say the same about my efforts, but California is diverting ever-larger sums from classrooms to the beneficiaries of the legerdemain referred to above.) I can’t eulogize Dick any better than The Economist does in its July 8 edition, linked and pasted below. Our country needs more like him.
David Crane
Dick Ravitch, New York’s fiscal superman
The developer who helped save the city and later kept the subway on track died on June 25th
The Economist, Jul 8, 2023
Subway cars were blanketed with graffiti inside and out when Richard Ravitch, who died on June 25th, became the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in 1979. Years of low investment meant the subway’s infrastructure was falling apart. Maintenance was deferred for months, if not years. The MTA’s workers had not had a pay rise in five years. The agency was deep in the red.
When the governor at the time, Hugh Carey, asked Mr Ravitch to become head of the MTA, which operates the subway, along with commuter lines, buses and some tunnels and bridges, he told the governor he was crazy to even ask. In his 2014 memoir Mr Ravitch wrote that “no one in his right mind would want to manage a system in the MTA’s condition.” But subway lines are the arteries of New York City. So Mr Ravitch, a regular rider, took the job, and arranged $8bn in investment using long-term financing to rebuild the system.
Luckily for New York, Mr Ravitch took a lot of tough jobs. In 1975, shortly after banks said they would no longer lend to the Urban Development Corp, a state authority, Carey appointed Mr Ravitch as its head. He kept it out of bankruptcy. Then he helped keep New York City from insolvency after it had been shut out of the bond market. Mr Ravitch helped create a financial-control board, which stabilised the city’s finances for decades, including after the September 11th attacks and the 2007-08 recession.
Not only did he have the expertise to navigate municipal and state finance, he could get people in a room to talk. Often that room was in his apartment late at night and the talk, while eating a Chinese takeaway, was with a union leader or a mayor. Or it was the head of a bank getting a 5am tour of an MTA facility.
In 2009 he was asked by Governor David Paterson to be his lieutenant, to help the state deal with the aftermath of the recession, particularly a looming $9bn budget deficit. He later said of the time that “it was, without a doubt, the most useless experience of my life.” Undeterred, he also advised Detroit and Puerto Rico during their financial crises.
He spoke bluntly in a gravelly voice and did not suffer fools or threats. Sam Roberts of the New York Times recently told WNYC, a public-radio station, that Donald Trump once threatened to get Mr Ravitch fired if he did not get Mr Trump a tax break. Mr Ravitch replied: “I’m going to get you arrested unless you leave my office now.” Mr Ravitch was confident that New York City would bounce back after covid-19. This time, making it happen will fall to someone else.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition of the The Economist under the headline "Fiscal superman"
David, these are the public servants whose passings I mourn. They truly don't make them like him anymore. I was in local government during the Wilson/Davis/Schwarzenegger eras. It was a sad time to be trying to provide services at the county level, made even sadder by the re-emergence of Brown, etc. I've lost hope that we'll ever see a return to good governance and statesmanship in California (and Idaho, where I now live). Thanks for continuing to bang the drum though, for reminding us there used to be a better (though never perfect) way.