Currently, the consensus is that if a pension fund is less than 100 percent funded, it is underfunded.1 In other words, if the pension fund does not presently have all the assets needed to pay liabilities in the future (and without consideration of future contributions to the pension fund), the...

To date, research on municipal insolvency and urban decline has been focused on the population loss and deindustrialization that befell urban centers such as Cleveland, St. Louis, and Detroit. Far less attention has been paid to the far more numerous small cities that border those urban centers:...

In bankruptcy, the City of Detroit, Michigan, cut retiree benefits and closed its two pension funds, but it retained a substantial net pension liability. To address the net pension liability that remained, the city created an irrevocable trust fund as authorized under Internal Revenue Code (IRC)...

“The debt is not payable,” said Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla of Puerto Rico to the New York Times on June 28th, 2015. In fact, by most independent analysis, the island’s $117 billion in total liabilities is not payable. Given this fact, the decision by elected officials not to provide...

Should this or that city exist? Such existential questions do not often arise in matters of public administration, but perhaps they should. This Article focuses on municipal disincorporation (or dissolution) and consolidation. The Article discusses what it takes to disappear a city and offers a...

In 2009, General Motors Corp. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sold off its Hummer, Saab, and Saturn divisions in order to repay creditors. The City of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2013, and attracted worldwide speculation that it would sell off Matisses, Cezannes, and...

For all the remedies that have been proposed for cities in distress, what has yet to be proposed is to make a city disappear. This Article explores such a proposal. Specifically, the Article will entertain the idea that a combination of Chapter 9 bankruptcy and disincorporation can be used to...

The small city of Central Falls, Rhode Island filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2011, with five other cities. The case could have easily been overshadowed by the insolvency of other sizable jurisdictions. Instead, Central Falls’ case is particular in both the treatment of bondholders and...