A 50 State Survey of: (1) Rights and Remedies Provided by States to Investors, (2) State Supervision and Oversight Mechanisms of Financially Distressed Local Governments and (3) State Authorization of Municipalities to File Chapter 9 Bankruptcy

Due to the recent increase in ailing local and state governments, there has been widespread debate over how many of these entities will eventually end up filing for bankruptcy. Some municipal defaults have already occurred, and although it ultimately failed, there was a proposal to permit states to seek bankruptcy protection. Regardless of how many defaults actually happen, those that do take place will affect every citizen, not just the people who work and invest in the government. What alternatives are available for states and municipalities in financial distress? What have attorneys learned from past municipal defaults? What are the pros and cons of allowing state bankruptcies? The Emergence of State and Municipal Bankruptcies provides feedback from some of the nations leading legal minds on key differences between Chapter 11 and Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcies and offers examples of recent municipal defaults. These experts also discuss the impact of municipal bankruptcies on residents, taxpayers, and the public market, and speculate on whether state bankruptcies should be permitted. The report offers an on-the-spot look at the issue as it continues to unfold.

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.

The specific research question guiding this exploratory study is: how do the methods utilized by particular municipalities to address fiscal distress, including bankruptcy, asset monetization and the issuance of debt, impact fiscal health. To answer the principal research question, six municipalities are selected for case study research in order to review and consider the circumstances surrounding such responses and the impacts thereof, and the relevant fiscal indicators and conditions that contribute to fiscal distress in each instance. By examining the context and circumstances of each case, this study offers an understanding of the variables and indicators that are present during times of local government fiscal distress, which resulted in the adoption of one of the three aforementioned strategies undertaken by the local governments studied in their attempts to eliminate such fiscal distress. This study finds that the successful cases that maintained a healthier fiscal position prior to utilizing any response, displayed initiative to improve fiscal condition, employed professional staff and developed and followed fiscal policies were better off fiscally than their unsuccessful counterparts. Finally, future research should compare, contrast and study additional types of responses through similar indicators. This study recognizes that developing such a framework requires intimate contextual and domain knowledge, as well as an awareness of the multi-causal relationships that exist between a jurisdictions external environment, its internal finances, and its management practices.

Similar circumstances, do not? This Article builds on the literature examining the causes and consequences of municipal fiscal distress by exploring specific factors that lead municipalities to seek help from the state and federal government. Viewing municipal opportunities and constraints through political, economic, and legal lenses, this Article helps to explain the nuances of municipal decision making.After identifying eight factors that may serve as predictors of municipal insolvency, we studied cities in fiscal distress with an eye toward uncovering the circumstances that led each of these cities into and, if applicable, out of, their financial predicaments. Union density, unfunded pension liability, and financial mismanagement were the three most prevalent factors in our sample population. Our analysis suggests that scholars and policymakers should focus their efforts on using bankruptcy relief in conjunction with state aid programs in order to address these primary sources of municipal distress more comprehensively.

The years from 2011 to 2013 were remarkable in municipal bankruptcy terms. During those years, several cities and counties took the rare step of filing for bankruptcy under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code. When Detroit filed for bankruptcy in July, 2013, it became the largest city measured by both population and outstanding debt to file for Chapter 9.The recent filings challenge the conventional wisdom that Chapter 9 is poorly tailored to the rehabilitation needs of larger cities and counties. Those who have written about Chapter 9 in the past twenty years have treated Chapter 9 and state intervention in municipal financial affairs as freestanding alternatives rather than as complementary components of a comprehensive municipal financial recovery plan. These authors compare municipal bankruptcy to corporate bankruptcy and conclude that because Chapter 9 does not incorporate all of the Chapter 11 checks on debtor behavior, it cannot adequately promote the financial rehabilitation of a sizable general-purpose municipality. This approach ignores the original goal of Congress in enacting a municipal bankruptcy law in the aftermath of the Great Depression, which was to bring together two sovereigns, the state and the federal government, to accomplish something that neither could accomplish alone - the imposition of a plan to adjust municipal debts that would be binding on all creditors, wherever located. This article refocuses the discussion about the limitations of the municipal bankruptcy process by examining the goals of Chapter 9 and relating its governance provisions to those goals. A refocused discussion is particularly timely, because the deteriorating financial condition of many cities has led states to reexamine their programs for resolving municipal financial distress and the conditions under which they permit their municipalities to file for bankruptcy. Chapter 9 may only be as effective as the state governance that accompanies it. Therefore, policy makers on the state and federal levels need an understanding of the role of Chapter 9 in an integrated scheme for municipal financial recovery in order to decide whether and how to assist municipalities on the state level and to decide whether reforms to Chapter 9 are necessary.

Fiscal Health for Local Governments offers a how-to approach to identifying and solving financial problems. Its principal selling point lies in its assumptions: instead of using the vocabulary and research agendas of economist, finance scholars, and political scientists, it will appeal to readers who lack sophisticated knowledge in these areas and nevertheless need practical advice. The book stems from the Fiscal Health Education Program, an applied economics program at the University of Minnesota. It uses three measures of fiscal health — financial condition, trend analysis, and financial trend monitoring system — as the basis for advocating particular fiscal strategies. The book examines the tools that can be used to assess the condition of a local government's fiscal health and some of the policy causes or remedies for certain situations, as well as some of the strategies governments can pursue to maintain and improve health. It will serve as a primer for readers interested in understanding financial processes and alternatives, and as a practical guide for those who need access to fiscal measurement tools. How-to approach will appeal to readers who lack sophisticated knowledge Contains discussion questions and anonymous case studies of actual cities and municipalities Presents practical methods for identifying and solving common fiscal problems