Richard Ravitch RIP

Over the weekend I stumbled upon an old 1989 documentary made for the now- defunct WNYC TV about the monumental US Supreme Court decision of that year which eliminated the Board of Estimate and triggered a restructuring of how NYC government is run.

It's called Power! Who Wins, Who Loses and, given its subject matter, is a shockingly entertaining look at how this city was run for nearly a century -- before it had to change.

And seeing this doc coincided with learning that the great Richard Ravitch has died.

Who was he?

He's the man who saved NYC multiple times -- first, in 1975, he was part of the team that prevented the city from going bankrupt; second, in the early 1980s, when he was the head of the MTA and overhauled how that messy public authority was run; and third, in 2009, when he became the Lieutenant Governor and saved the state (and the city's) finances). Ravitch was never elected to anything, but as a lawyers and developer he understand the mechanics of governor better than anyone and 

While politicians, elected officials, may be the ones who make the laws and run things on a day-to-day basis, most of them sadly know little about how the government actually runs, how it works, how it finances itself. When it comes to government, most politicians are amateurs. It's people like Ravitch and Stan Brezenoff who understand this kind of thing deeply, they are the professionals who make it work.

And in a time when expertise is being trashed by the proudly ignorant, people like Ravitch should be appreciated all the more -- and their passing should be deeply mourned. RIP.