Richard Brodsky, who persuaded his fellow state legislators to impose a monitor over 700 quasi-public authorities that had borrowed $150 billion on behalf of New Yorkers with no oversight, died on Wednesday at his dwelling in Greenburgh, N.Y. He was 73.
The trigger was a coronary heart assault, his daughter Emilyn mentioned. He had proven signs of the coronavirus, she mentioned, but in addition had a coronary heart situation. Take a look at outcomes acquired after he died confirmed he didn’t have the illness.
A 14-term Democratic assemblyman from Westchester, Mr. Brodsky was considered a typically discordant, typically quixotic conscience of the State Legislature.
Representing the Decrease Hudson Valley from 1983 by means of 2010, he was a champion of the surroundings, a critic of security precautions on the Indian Level nuclear energy plant and a supporter of common web entry.
He additionally opposed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s proposal to cost motorists a price to enter the Manhattan enterprise district, arguing that it amounted to a regressive tax.
“He tormented the company world in New York — the utilities, the cable firms,” mentioned his fellow assemblyman James F. Brennan, a Brooklyn Democrat.
Mr. Brodsky wielded his chairmanship of the Meeting Committee on Firms, Authorities and Commissions as a cudgel over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York State Thruway Authority, the Lengthy Island Energy Authority and different businesses that had proliferated largely to keep away from oversight by the voters and their approval to incur debt past what the state can borrow by itself.
He labeled these businesses “Soviet-style bureaucracies” that collectively constituted a “shadow authorities.”
His 2009 laws, drafted by a fee led by the lawyer Ira Millstein, an expert on corporate governance, established an independent authorities budget office, which required greater transparency of agencies that operated largely independent of state government and subjected them to greater oversight.
“This is the most fundamental reform of state government in decades, and it’s a blueprint for further reform of state government,” he told The New York Times.
Richard Louis Brodsky was born on May 4, 1946, in Manhattan to William and Louise (Snow) Brodsky. His father was a structural engineer and his mother a dental hygienist. The family moved from Brooklyn to Westchester when he was 9.
After graduating from Ardsley High School, in the village of Ardsley, part of Greenburgh, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Brandeis University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. He was a county legislator before being elected to the State Assembly in 1982.
Besides his daughter Emilyn, survivors include his wife, Paige Massman Brodsky; another daughter, Willie; and a sister, Vicki Wessel.
Mr. Brodsky ran for state attorney general in 2006 but abandoned his campaign to donate a kidney to Willie. In 2010, he gave up his Assembly seat to seek the Democratic nomination to succeed Andrew M. Cuomo as attorney general, but lost the primary to Eric Schneiderman.
Since then, Mr. Brodsky won two court cases on behalf of the Working Families Party. One, in 2004, let the party contribute to candidates running in Democratic primaries. And in March, a judge overturned rules by the Public Financing Commission that would have raised the threshold for minor parties to automatically remain on the ballot. Those rules, however, were reimposed this month by the Legislature.