Detroit and Chicago have announced plans to offload their unfunded retiree health plans onto the Affordable Care Act exchanges. The Detroit announcement predated the July 18th filing for bankruptcy protection. These cities believe they will save tens if not hundreds of millions in expenditures annually if they are successful in their intentions.
While Pittsburgh has some similarities with the problems in Detroit (albeit nowhere near the same magnitude) and there is cause for concern about Pittsburgh’s financial wellbeing, there is little chance that on its present course the City will face bankruptcy. That is not to say that it can be allowed to return to the spendthrift, reckless behavior that had the City headed toward financial collapse and brought it to the point of being placed under two state financial overseeing groups-the ICA board and the Act 47 financial coordinator team-a decade ago.
The announcement of Detroit’s bankruptcy filing was not unexpected. After all, the city has been running huge deficits for years, has built up almost $20 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and debt, has abysmally poor public services including inadequate policing, has been hemorrhaging population and has high crime rates. In financial terms the city has been bankrupt for years. And it has benefitted from major federal assistance in the form of a bailout of GM that preserved jobs, pensions and health benefits for union employees.
This past January Pittsburgh was visited by officials from the Flint, Michigan based Center for Land Reform (it was one of 15 cities chosen) about
Hard on the heels of a report that half of Detroit property owners are not paying property taxes comes the story out of Philadelphia that
