The city of Chicago impounds vehicles where debtors have three or more unpaid fines. Robbin Fulton’s vehicle was impounded, and when she filed for bankruptcy and asked the city to turn over her vehicle, it refused. And so, the question the Supreme Court will decide in City of Chicago, Illinois v. Fulton is whether a local government
We’ve been hearing about municipal bankruptcy and Chapter 9 a lot over the past few years. But to what extent has this become the norm? Very little, according to a Governing analysis of eligible local governments that have filed for bankruptcy protection. In fact, there have been a total of only 680 bankruptcy filings since
Last Monday, the City of Detroit emerged from Chapter 9 Bankruptcy — nearly five years after it filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. The June 2013 filing came at what was perhaps the nadir of the city’s spirits, battered by decades of population and jobs losses. A few months after the filing, the
The lawyers and pundits will scour every word in the ruling by Judge Steven Rhodes declaring the City of Detroit eligible for bankruptcy. Truth be told, I’d probably find that exercise exhilarating! In the end however, it’s not the ruling from Judge Rhodes with which I am preoccupied. Nor am I particularly concerned with what
Almost six months ago, Meredith Whitney – the controversial financial investor who made her name by predicting the recent troubles for Wall Street banks – set off a firestorm in financial markets by claiming that “social unrest” was coming in the form of ”50-100 sizeable municipal defaults.” She’s back this week with an op-ed in
NLC is receiving a lot of media inquiries about the prospect of cities filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. It’s not surprising that the chattering classes are agog about cities going under. It’s a grabber of a headline: “City X Files Ch. 9!” The problem with this story is that the numbers just aren’t there to
