Richard Ravitch — who died Sunday, a dozen days short of his 90th birthday — was among the last surviving members of a remarkable generation of political and business leaders who steered New York City out of its brushes with bankruptcy in the mid-1970s.
Ravitch’s public service didn’t end with Gotham’s crisis: To the very end, this staunchly liberal Democrat was a voice for financial responsibility at every level of American government, especially (with increasing frustration) in his beloved hometown.
Ravitch’s construction company had just opened Waterside Plaza residential and commercial complex on the East River when, in early 1975, newly elected Gov. Hugh L. Carey asked him to take over as chairman of the Urban Development Corp., just before it defaulted on a bond payment.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
______________________
E.J. McMahon is a senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy and a Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow. Follow him on Twitter here.
Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images