A little bit of schadenfreude - San Bernardino, California
The Californian city of San Bernardino is bankrupt -- unfunded union pension liabilities and tax rates that drove out businesses.
Who do they hire to turn things around? From
USA Today:
Bankrupt Calif. city hires twice-bankrupt manager
Bankrupt San Bernardino, Calif., has hired a new city manager with professional experience getting cities out of fiscal jams and personal experience getting deeply into debt — he has twice declared personal bankruptcy.
The financial problems of the city of 210,000 in Riverside County, about 65 miles east of Los Angeles, are seen as a national test case that pits worker pensions against Wall Street bond holders.
Over the past 30 years, Allen J. Parker has served as city manager or redevelopment director for other communities in California and Illinois.
On Feb. 15, the San Bernardino City Council hired the 71-year-old Parker — at an annual salary of nearly $222,000 — knowing that he and his wife had declared bankruptcy in February 2011, The Press-Enterprise reported. They owed creditors more than $620,000, and had assets, including a house, worth $170,000, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court records.
City officials also knew about Parker's 1991 bankruptcy in San Mateo, south of San Francisco, and that in 2010 he was removed from the Banning Heights Mutual Water Co. after shareholders sued him and other board members for trying to sell the private utility, Reuters reported.
I cannot see this ending well. This kind of delusional thinking is what got them into this problem in the first place. Also, why has Parker moved around so much -- if he was any good at management, he would find a place and stay there for 30 years...
Posted by DaveH at February 23, 2013 11:21 AM