When Government Fails: The Orange County Bankruptcy

Baldassare, Mark

ISBN 10: 0520214862 / ISBN 13: 9780520214866

Published by University of California Press, 1998

COVER SHOWS SOME GENERAL WEAR, SUCH AS SCRATCHES, RUBBING, STICKER AND/OR GLUE RESIDUE AND CREASES. COVER AND/OR PAGES OF THE BOOK ARE YELLOWING DUE TO AGE. COVER SHOWS SOME DISCOLORATION OR SUN-FADING. STILL A GOOD READING COPY. paperback 100% of proceeds go to charity! Good condition with all pages in tact. Item shows signs of use and may have cosmetic defects. Seller Inventory # Z-004-3267

Synopsis:

When Orange County, California, filed for Chapter 9 protection on December 6, 1994, it became the largest municipality in United States history to declare bankruptcy. In the first comprehensive analysis of this momentous fiscal crisis, Mark Baldassare uncovers the many twists and turns from the dark days in December 1994 to the financial recovery of June 1996. Utilizing a wealth of primary materials from the county government and Merrill Lynch, as well as interviews with key officials and players in this drama, Mark Baldassare untangles the causes of this $1.64 billion fiasco.

He finds three factors critical to understanding the bankruptcy: one, the political fragmentation of the numerous local governments in the area; two, the fiscal conservatism underlying voters' feelings about their tax dollars; three, the financial austerity in state government and in meeting rising state expenditures. Baldassare finds that these forces help to explain how a county known for its affluence and conservative politics could have allowed its cities' school, water, transportation, and sanitation agencies to be held hostage to this failed investment pool. Meticulously examining the events that led up to the bankruptcy, the local officials' response to the fiscal emergency, and the road to fiscal recovery-as well as the governmental reforms engendered by the crisis-When Government Fails is a dramatic and instructive economic morality tale. Eminently readable, it underlines the dangers inherent in a freewheeling bull economy and the imperatives of local and state governments to protect fiscal assets. As Baldassare shows, Orange County need not-and should not-happen again.

About the Author: Mark Baldassare is a Senior Fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) and Professor and Chair of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of California, Irvine. He is also founder and Director of the Orange County Annual Survey, and the author of numerous books in urban politics.

Bibliographic Details

Title: When Government Fails: The Orange County ...
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Good