San Bernardino becomes 3rd CA city to file for bankruptcy

PanARMENIAN.Net - San Bernardino’s City Council voted to become the third California city this year to file for bankruptcy, as it struggles with declining tax revenue, growing employee costs and accounting discrepancies in its ledgers, Bloomberg reports.

A San Bernardino filing would follow Stockton, a community of 292,000 east of San Francisco, which on June 28 became the biggest U.S. city to go into bankruptcy. Mammoth Lakes, a mountain resort of 8,200, filed for protection from creditors on July 3 saying it can’t afford to pay a $43 million judgment, more than twice its general-fund spending for the year.

Confronting a $45 million budget shortfall, San Bernardino is facing insolvency because of accounting errors, deficit spending, pension and debt costs, and lack of revenue growth, according to a June 26 budget analysis posted on the city’s website. Officials have declared fiscal emergencies, negotiated for concessions from employees and reduced the workforce by 20 percent in four years.