By Laura N. Coordes (Arizona State University Law School)
In order to gain access to chapter 9 bankruptcy, municipalities must demonstrate that they meet several eligibility requirements. These requirements were put in place to prevent municipalities from making rash decisions about filing for bankruptcy. Too often, however, these requirements impede municipalities from attaining desperately needed relief. This Article demonstrates that as currently utilized, the chapter 9 eligibility rules overemphasize deterrence and are not rationally connected to the reasons the chapter 9 bankruptcy system was developed. This Article, therefore, posits that the chapter 9 eligibility requirements should be relaxed.
To support this claim, the Article conducts a detailed analysis of the history and theory of chapter 9 to determine the primary reasons for the eligibility rules and the core functions of a municipal bankruptcy solution. It then demonstrates how many of the concerns driving the eligibility rules’ existence are addressed in other chapter 9 mechanisms, and it proposes sweeping revisions to the eligibility rules to facilitate appropriate access to chapter 9. Specifically, municipalities in fiscal distress should be able to access bankruptcy when they demonstrate a need for the primary types of assistance that bankruptcy can best provide: nonconsensual debt adjustment, elimination of the holdout creditor problem, and breathing space. Through its analysis, this Article brings needed attention to the broader questions of who should have access to bankruptcy and when that access should be granted.
The full article is available here.
For more Roundtable posts on municipal bankruptcy, see Parikh & He, “Falling Cities and the Red Queen Phenomenon”; Skeel, “From Chrysler and General Motors to Detroit”; and Roundtable updates on Puerto Rico’s debt crisis (covering a call for congressional action and Puerto Rico’s Public Corporation Debt Enforcement and Recovery Act).