Paterson to Name Ex-M.T.A. Chief as Lieutenant Governor (NY)

[brooklynite]

Source: New York Times

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson will name Richard Ravitch, a former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, as lieutenant governor in a televised speech he has scheduled for late Wednesday afternoon, according to an administration official.
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The office of lieutenant governor has been vacant since Eliot Spitzer resigned in March 2008. The lack of a lieutenant governor — who casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate — has become a particularly pressing issue amid a nearly five-week old stalemate in the State Senate that has halted business in the chamber. The Senate has been deadlocked since Pedro Espada Jr., a Bronx Democrat, sided with the Senate’s 30 Republicans, dividing the 62-member chamber.

Mr. Ravitch, a 76-year-old lawyer, is a veteran public servant, having been chairman of the state’s Urban Development Corporation under Gov. Hugh L. Carey in the 1970s before leading an overhaul of mass transit financing during his tenure as M.T.A. chairman, from 1979 to 1983. He has never held elected office, though he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for mayor in 1989.

...snip...

There is no provision in the New York State Constitution that provides for filling the office in the event of a vacancy, though some in Albany have pushed a legal theory that state law would allow the governor to name someone to the post.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/nyregion/09albany.html?_r=1&hp

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Ravitch may be doing this to take a swat at the State Legislature for rejecting his MTA funding program, which he came up with after leading a Governor's Task Force on financial needs for the transit system. Meanwhile, as the two parties squabble over Senate control, the Democratic Senate Caucus appears to be fracturing along ethnic lines, with a group of Hispanic Legislators (several of whom threatened to withhold votes at the start of the session) holding public strategy sessions separate from those of the Democratic Leadership.

[aquart]

1. Paterson robocalled NY (at least me) tonight explaining the whole thing.

But I hung up.