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, 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.
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.