Conti-Brown says, “The common route [to recovery] is a kind of Solomonic undertaking—everyone loses a little as the debt is restructured. But sometimes public employee unions hold more sway and retain more of their members’ benefits in the process; sometimes such unions are less powerful and receive less.” Additionally, Skeel says that, “Historically… what’s tended to happen is the state has stepped in and provided some money in return for some control over the city’s budget…What’s complicated that recently is that the states have not been in great shape.”
When Bridgeport, Connecticut filed for Chapter 9 in 1991, they received help from a state oversight board, and also convinced Chase Manhattan to keep its Connecticut headquarters in Bridgeport which helped. There were other approaches, too, one part of which was arranging for Donald Trump to buy out 100 acres of publicly owned property to develop an amusement park and motor race track, though that never came to pass. In 1992, The New York Times reported that there were also “measures including a plan to recover delinquent property taxes by selling tax liens to a private collection agency,” as well as acquisitions for aid from the state, and “concessions from the city’s unions.”
Among the more colorful approaches in recent years was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s. In 2011, having been huckstered by a corrupt company to build an up-to-code (and ultimately faulty) trash-to-energy incinerator, the Keystone State’s capital city petitioned for Chapter 9. They sold the incinerator for $130 million, as well as auctioned off a collection of Wild West artifacts owned by a former mayor which brought in nearly $4 million. It also monetized its parking assets, which included privatizing garages, in effect doubling the price of city parking which, for virtually the first time, they began enforcing.
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