(August 3)  The city of San Bernardino filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection Wednesday, August 1, three weeks after the city council first gave the city attorney direction to do so.
When the city council, facing a $45.8 million deficit, voted to take that unprecedented move on July 10 and confirmed it with a follow-up vote on July 18, city attorney James Penman indicated it would take nearly a month to prepare the filing and make full documentation to support it. But on Wednesday, Paul Glassman, a bankruptcy attorney with the Santa Monica-based law firm of Stradling Yocca Carlson and Rauth submitted an “emergency filing” in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Riverside which bore the signature of interim city manager Andrea Travis-Miller as well as that of Glassman.
The eight page long filing included the five-page resolution the city council passed July 18 declaring that without bankruptcy protection the city’s financial situation “jeopardizes the health, safety or well-being of residents.”
According to the filing, the city has liabilities and assets which both total more than $1 billion and somewhere between 10,001 and 25,000 creditors, which include employees, vendors, the city has worked with, and litigants who have sued the city.