This report examines what happened to local California government revenues during the recent period of economic problems, which services have been adjusted, how employee benefits have been treated, and what innovations have been introduced. The report is based on both a web-based survey of 245 California city government officials and face-to-face interviews with chief financial officers in most of the state's major cities (Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Riverside, Pasadena and Los Angeles). The report concludes with recommendations for local governments across the nation. These include: Identify and address structural deficits in a finely grained manner, leaving no major budget category unexamined; Foster citizen engagement to encourage widespread dissemination of fiscal information in order to enhance the legitimacy of public policy choices; Improve the state/local relationship to reduce episodic, convulsive impacts on local public finance.--

"Fiscal stress is a problem of growing concern to all levels of government. This volume provides in-depth analyses of the causes and consequences of financial stress, and offers solutions for managers charged with the responsibility for maintaining fiscal solvency and adequate and equitable services"--Back cover.

It is difficult to find someone who has not heard about the Puerto Rico, Detroit, Michigan, or Orange County, California, bankruptcies. While guides for responsibly managing government finances exist, problems often originate not because of poor financial reporting or financial deficiencies but because issues external to financial wellbeing arise, such as economic, demographic, political, legal, or even environmental factors. Exacerbating the problem, there is not much advice in the existing literature on how to act when municipalities face financial struggles. Filling this important gap, this book explores fiscal health and fiscal hardships, municipal defaults and bankruptcies, and many other aspects to help guide local governments during fiscal distress. Fiscal hardships negatively affect the quality and availability of public goods and services and, consequently, the wellbeing of residents and businesses living and working in distressed municipalities. Turned off streetlights, unmaintained public parks, potholes, inconsistent garbage pickup, longer response time from emergency services, and multiple other issues that residents of the struggling municipalities deal with, lead to higher crime rates, lower quality of K-12 education, dangerous road conditions, lower housing values, outmigration of wealthier population, and numerous other problems. The COVID-19 pandemic put additional unprecedented pressure on municipal finances nationwide. In this book authors Tatyana Guzman and Natalia Ermasova evaluate distressed cities and municipalities and provide practical recommendations on improving their financial conditions. What are conditions and signs to look for to not to find yourself in similar situations? What can be done if your municipality is already experiencing fiscal hardships? What are the consequences of fiscal misfortunes? How does one exit a fiscal emergency? This book answers these and other questions and serves as a guide to fiscal health and prosperity for U.S. municipal governments, students and researchers in public finance, and general public management fields.

Provides some of the most current thinking on various aspects of fiscal stress in the public sector and its implications for public management. It lays out the background of financial stress at the federal, state, and local levels, suggesting how various public bodies have responded or might respond to fiscal stress. 'Fiscal Stress and Public Policy is an excellent collection of articles. They are provocative, readable, and of enduring value of academicians, scholars and students of public policy. Indeed, individual contributions are overshadowed only by the overall quality of the volume.' -- Quality and Quantity, Vol 17, 1983 'This is an excellent collection of essays. They coalesce around an extremely imp