New York Governor David Paterson, CC '77, named former Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman Richard Ravitch, CC ’55, as lieutenant governor on Wednesday.
“There is nothing quite as satisfying as using talents, skills, energy to help other people,” Ravitch told the Spectator in April.
Paterson tapped Ravitch in the fall of 2008 to lead a commission investigating the MTA's finances, a job in which Ravitch was asked to propose solutions to the agency's budget concerns without placing unreasonable stress on commuters' wallets. The New York State Senate rejected his plan in the spring of 2009, though leaders in Albany were able to strike a deal over a month later that lessened the fare hike blow.
Ravitch led the MTA from 1979 to 1983, and later made an unsuccessful bid for mayor. He has since become a principal at the Upper East Side law firm Ravitch, Rice and Company, while continuing to provide advisory counsel to the MTA. During the 2008 presidential primary elections, he served as a New York delegate for President Barack Obama, CC ’83.
Like Obama, Ravitch didn't have a typical Columbia experience in that he transferred in before his sophomore year and never lived in the dorms. Still, he told the Spectator that “I had an extraordinary education that had an enormous influence on my life and my political views. I was studying during Columbia’s heyday.”
Local State Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) said of Ravitch's appointment, "Richard Ravitch is exactly the type of no-nonsense leader we need in the State of New York," and added that "Richard Ravitch is an extremely smart choice to help get New York moving again, not only has he been successful in mitigating a catastrophe within the Metropolitan Transit Authority, but he has the track record of an individual who has dedicated the majority of his working life to improving the lives of New York's 19.5 million residents."