Richard Ravitch was a loyal Democrat who worried a lot about debt. There was a time when such a combination was not a contradiction.
Richard “Dick” Ravitch, who passed away this week at the age of 89, was a New York legend. He is best known for helping save both New York City and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from fiscal collapse in the 1970s. He also served as lieutenant governor of New York and the chief negotiator for Major League Baseball in the 1990s. In New York, he was the person behind the scenes who brought people together to solve problems, but he was also very influential on a national level.
We became friends from our shared passion for transparent public pensions. Never one to just sit around, Ravitch stayed active late in his life. “I can’t talk to you,” he once said when I called him on his cellphone. “I am on with Jack Lew figuring out what we are going to do about Puerto Rico,” Ravitch added, referring to the Obama administration Treasury secretary, before hanging up. In reality, Ravitch worked with everyone no matter their political party. That may seem like a rarity these days, but it was always unusual.
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
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