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Books > History > American history
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So Much to Do - A Full Life of Business, Politics, and Confronting Fiscal Crises (Hardcover)
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So Much to Do - A Full Life of Business, Politics, and Confronting Fiscal Crises (Hardcover)
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Every city and every state needs a Richard Ravitch. In sixty years
on the job, whether working in business or government, he was the
man willing to tackle some of the most complex challenges facing
New York. Trained as a lawyer, he worked briefly for the House of
Representatives, then began his career in his family's construction
business. He built high-profile projects like the Whitney Museum
and Citicorp Center but his primary energy was devoted to building
over 40,000 units of affordable housing including the first
racially integrated apartment complex in Washington, D.C. He dealt
with architects, engineers, lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians,
union leaders, construction workers, bankers, and
tenants--virtually all of the people who make cities and states
work.
It was no surprise that those endeavors ultimately led to a life of
public service. In 1975, Ravitch was asked by then New York
Governor Hugh Carey to arrange a rescue of the New York State Urban
Development Corporation, a public entity that had issued bonds to
finance over 30,000 affordable housing units but was on the verge
of bankruptcy. That same year, Ravitch was at Carey's side when New
York City's biggest banks said they would no longer underwrite its
debt and he became instrumental to averting the city's bankruptcy.
Throughout his career, Ravitch divided his time between public
service and private enterprise. He was chairman of the Metropolitan
Transportation Authority from 1979 to 1983 and is generally
credited with rebuilding the system. He turned around the Bowery
Savings Bank, chaired a commission that rewrote the Charter of the
City of New York, served on two Presidential Commissions, and
became chief labor negotiator for Major League Baseball.
Then, in 2008, after Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned in a
prostitution scandal and New York State was in a
post-financial-crisis meltdown, Spitzer's successor, David
Paterson, appointed Ravitch Lieutenant Governor and asked him to
make recommendations regarding the state's budgeting plan. What
Ravitch found was the result of not just the economic downturn but
years of fiscal denial. And the closer he looked, the clearer it
became that the same thing was happening in most states. Budgetary
pressures from Medicaid, pension promises to public employees, and
deceptive budgeting and borrowing practices are crippling our
states' ability to do what only they can do--invest in the physical
and human infrastructure the country needs to thrive. Making this
case is Ravitch's current public endeavor and it deserves immediate
attention from both public officials and private citizens.
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