Richard Ravitch

Council member Melinda Katz, a candidate for city comptroller, is having a June 19 fund-raiser that will showcase strong support from black and Latino lawmakers.

The elected officials on the host committee for the event include Yvette Clarke, Jeff Aubry, Jose Peralta, Maria del Carmen Arroyo, Maria Baez, Helen Foster and Melissa Mark Viverito.

One of her strongest opponents is Adolfo Carrion, the only Latino in the race.

It’s worth noting that Arroyo, Baez and Foster are also, like Carrion, from the Bronx.

The invitation also includes a number of big real estate people who sit on Katz’s finance committee: Douglas Durst, Peter Kalikow and Richard Ravitch. Katz recently said that her connections to the real estate industry are an asset to her.

Governor Paterson today announced the creation of a new panel to help find money to keep the M.T.A. afloat and running, as the agency is facing a tremendous shortfall in needed funding for the coming years.

The panel, led by Dick Ravitch, boasts infrastructure pros, the respective budget directors for the state and the city, the CEO of Con Edison, developer Douglas Durst, M.T.A. executive director Lee Sander, and the director of the Port Authority in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Peter Goldmark, among others.

Transit advocates and some officials widely expect the panel to recommend some sort of combination of increases in taxes and fees, perhaps locally, perhaps statewide; perhaps a combination. The fiscal woes of the M.T.A.—it’s upcoming five-year capital program is expected to be somewhere around $17 billion short of the $30 billion or so desired—could lead to service and upkeep setbacks if the money is not found [more here on this issue].  read more »

David Paterson announced that he’s creating a new “blue ribbon panel,” chaired by former M.T.A. chair Richard Ravitch, “to figure out how to ameliorate the hole in the M.T.A. capital budget.”

The hole is there partly because Michael Bloomberg’s plan to provide funds for the capital budget, congestion pricing, was killed in the State Assembly yesterday.  read more »

Letting local development corporations issue lots of debt for major projects like Hudson Yards could end up sticking the city with a hefty bill, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority warned City Council members today.

Dick Ravitch, who brought in billions in capital financing for the MTA in the 1980's, cautioned that if the residential and commercial developments don't bring in as much money as projected, the city might be stuck with the debt.  read more »