| Once the situation goes to a Bankruptcy court, the County would be in the graces of a plan and the Judge. The court could ultimately order an increase in the rates. While it is suggested that would not happen, that might be the only option if creditors are not happy with the plan and object.
At this point, the best option is for a special session to be called and let the legislators get to work. Once a special session takes place, the plan proposed by Smoot, Collins and Bowman would probably take another form that the voters would be more likely to approve. They are not going to have to take this in the current format as recommended by the Commission and just be stuck with it if as it stands.
Right now, I do not have a great understanding of the politics of the situation. However, I do feel that the public is being seriously misled to think that bankruptcy is going to wipe the slate clean. There is also no guarantee that Bronner and RSA would be able to purchase the debt once out of bankruptcy. Also, Bronner even admits that RSA would not be the only ones bidding.
It is also very likely that attorney fees and other professional fees would be much higher in a bankruptcy. Also, the court would have to determine solvency and technically the county is not insolvent with various tax revenues available.
We have mostly seen smaller cities file bankruptcy because they are completely insolvent and they cannot find anyone to do a workout with.
In fact, this would be the largest municipality bankruptcy in the Country outside of Orange County.
There are several other facts and nunances that I learned, but for now we just want to get across the point that bankruptcy should be the last resort and at this time we have other plans that should be considered. We should not have preconceived bias against those plans because of past failures. |
