If there is a lesson from Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy, it’s that going broke can only take a city so far. Municipal bankruptcy is a process that gets a city out of debts that it can’t pay. But city residents don’t get better services when those debts are canceled.

There are some things that ought to surprise people about city finances. When Detroit filed for bankruptcy in July 2013, residents found out that the group the city owed the most money to was not banks or bondholders or city contractors—it was the city’s pensioners. Former city employees accidentally became Detroit’s largest creditors because the city didn’t have enough money to pay them what they were owed.

This should not be. When governments promise to pay their employees pensions, they should set aside enough money to pay for them. This keeps the cost of pensions on current taxpayers and doesn’t push the costs into the future.

Michigan has a constitutional requirement that public officials properly pre-fund pensions, but that did not happen in Detroit. This wasn’t a simple mistake. Multiple Detroit pension officers and advisers were sent to prison for bribery.