Law Commons^™

A New Fulcrum Point For City Survival, Samir D. Parikh

William & Mary Law Review

Municipalities have historically enjoyed immense stability. This era of tranquility is over, and fiscal deterioration is accelerating. Policymakers and scholars have struggled to formulate debt restructuring options; almost all have embraced federal bankruptcy law. But this resource-draining process is not the fulcrum point for any meaningful solution to municipal demise. Indeed, for the vast majority of distressed municipalities, the lever of municipal recovery will not turn on the solutions that have been offered to date. This Article radically shifts the municipal recovery debate by arguing that state law is the centralized point at which officials can exert the necessary amount …