Richard Brodsky

Richard Louis Brodsky (May 4, 1946 – April 8, 2020) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. Brodsky served in the New York Assembly from 1983 until 2010.

Brodsky was born on May 4, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York City. In 1955, the family moved to Westchester County. He attended Ardsley High School. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics from Brandeis University and Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

A Democrat, Brodsky was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1983 to 2010, sitting in the 185th, 186th, 187th, 188th, 189th, 190th, 191st, 192nd, 193rd, 194th, 195th, 196th, 197th and 198th New York State Legislatures. He was first elected to public office in 1975, winning a seat in the Westchester County Board of Legislators.

In 2006, Brodsky announced his intentions of running for Attorney General of New York, a campaign that he suspended in order to donate a kidney to his 14-year-old daughter. He did not ultimately donate, but later introduced legislation that would make consent to organ donation presumptive for New York state residents. After the resignation of New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi, Brodsky was a frontrunner to succeed the scandal-ridden Hevesi. Thomas DiNapoli was selected instead by the Legislature to serve out the rest of Hevesi's term. Brodsky later ran to succeed Attorney General Andrew Cuomo in the 2010 elections, but lost to Eric Schneiderman in the primary.

Brodsky wrote a weekly column for the Albany Times Union up until days before his death. He served on the Board of Advisors of the Global Panel Foundation. In 2010, Brodsky became a Senior Fellow at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. Additionally, in April 2011, Brodsky joined non-partisan public policy organization Demos as Senior Fellow. He wrote regularly for Demos' "Policy Shop" weblog and is a columnist for The Capitol.

Brodsky worked as a lawyer for the Working Families Party for years, notably winning a "landmark case stemming out of the 2004 Albany County district attorney contest that let the WFP spend money in Democratic primary races, paving the way for the WFP’s future involvement in campaigns like the one run by Cynthia Nixon in the 2018 gubernatorial campaign." On the day that Governor Andrew Cuomo began to put New York on lockdown in response to the COVID-19 crisis, Brodsky won "a WFP challenge against rules created by the Public Financing Commission that threatened to destroy the state’s minor parties."

Brodsky sponsored the Public Authorities Reform Act, which was signed into law in December 2009.

As Chair of the Assembly Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, Brodsky investigated New York's system of public authorities, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York State Thruway Authority, the Long Island Power Authority and the Olympic Regional Development Authority. Brodsky sponsored the Public Authorities Accountability Act of 2005.