Lives of Consequence
Edward V. Regan ’52
Former New York State Comptroller
Though he was a novice in high finance when he was elected New York State comptroller in 1979, Edward V. Regan ’52, a Buffalo Republican, served 14 years as his party’s highest-ranking state official and successfully managed public pension funds while monitoring hundreds of municipalities and state agencies.
The New York Times noted that Regan’s four-term tenure as comptroller was marked by his sharp fiscal oversight and the “aura of rectitude” he brought to “what many saw as Albany’s wasteland of corruption and profligacy.”
Born in Plainfield, N.J., Regan was the oldest of five children. He attended primary school in Utica, N.Y., and graduated from the Nichols School in Buffalo in 1947 and from Hobart College in 1952.
He served in the U.S. Navy as an intelligence officer in 1952 and 1953, before returning to Buffalo to run a family liquor business. He earned a law degree with honors from the State University at Buffalo in 1964 before his first venture into the political arena.
In 1965, he won a seat on the Buffalo City Council. Five years later, Regan campaigned for state comptroller at the behest of the state Republican Party officials in “what all acknowledged to be a hopeless run,” eventually losing the election by 1.3 million votes.
After six years as the elected executive of Erie County, Regan ran for state comptroller again, now with the endorsement of his Democratic predecessor, and won.
He ran an unsuccessful bid for governor in 1982.
As a longtime New York state comptroller, Regan was a staunch critic of heavy borrowing and fiscal gimmicks to balance budgets. During his tenure -- in which he oversaw New York’s public-employee pension fund, the second-largest in the country -- Regan’s stock-investment strategies significantly grew the state pension fund, from $10 billion to $56 billion.
Regan announced his resignation in 1993 to become president of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College in Dutchess County. In the late 1990s, he served as chair of the Municipal Assistance Corporation, providing fiscal oversight for New York City. He was the president of Baruch College of the City University of New York from 2000 to 2004 and taught classes on government at the university.
Regan passed away in October 2014 in Greenwich, Conn., at age 84.