Facing Debts of $18 Billion
This afternoon, Kevyn D. Orr, the Emergency Manager appointed by Gov. Snyder, announced…
“Detroit…has filed for bankruptcy…the largest American city ever to take such a course.
Not everyone agrees how much Detroit owes, but Kevyn D. Orr, the emergency manager who was appointed by Mr. Snyder to resolve the city’s financial problems, has said the debt is likely to be $18 billion and perhaps as much as $20 billion.”
More below the kos kurlique...
…numerous factors over many years have brought Detroit to this point, including a shrunken tax base but still a huge, 139-square-mile city to maintain; overwhelming health care and pension costs; repeated efforts to manage mounting debts with still more borrowing; annual deficits in the city’s operating budget since 2008; and city services crippled by aged computer systems, poor record-keeping and widespread dysfunction.
All of that makes bankruptcy — a process that could take months, if not years, and is itself expected to be costly — particularly complex…”
Both Orr and Mayor Bing spoke to reporters, and sought to reassure citizens that Detroit "will get through it". Mayor Bing noted that this was not the direction he would have chosen, but now that it is the path chosen, that Detroit "will make the best of it". Former Mayor Archer and Gov. Snyder are all making positive statements too. But--despite their positive spin, a major city filing bankruptcy is not a reassuring development, and many Detroiters, and citizens of surrounding cities and counties are processing the impact this will have on them, on city services, etc.
What this will mean for the City and the people who live in it, as well as surrounding counties remains to be seen, but it is a depressing and distressing development for the city and the region.
“…The nature of Detroit’s situation ensures that it will be watched intensely by the municipal bond market, by public sector unions, and by leaders of other financially challenged cities around the country. Only slightly more than 60 cities, towns, villages and counties have filed under Chapter 9, the court proceeding used by municipalities, since the mid-1950s…
Around this city, there was widespread uncertainty about what bankruptcy might really mean, now and in the long term, though leaders of other cities who have been through court cautioned of lingering effects…
This is a developing story, and no doubt many reports and analyses will be written about the situation as things unfold.