Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Publication Information
42 Yale J. Reg. 529 (2025).
Abstract
This Article draws out the lessons of counties for municipal finance. To do so, the Article begins by unpacking the municipal finance regulations that have provided counties with extraordinary fiscal safety. The Article then turns to case studies of the eleven counties that either filed for bankruptcy or had state fiscal interventions since the passage of the Bankruptcy Code in 1978. Those case studies show how counties' finances can (in rare cases) go wrong despite well-designed municipal finance regulations. The case studies also show how counties have successfully responded to those crises through bankruptcy and fiscal intervention.
Using that analysis, the Article concludes with lessons for municipal finance more broadly. That includes lessons for making municipal finance safer for all local governments, lessons for mitigating the risk of municipal finance going wrong, and lessons for handling fiscal crises so as to minimize the human misery that local fiscal crises threaten, and too often, bring.
Recommended Citation
Michael A. Francus,
Too Essential to Fail: Lessons from County Fiscal Crises,
42 Yale J. Reg. 529 (2025)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1716