Formerly bankrupt Stockton is fiscally healthy again, but offers warning to others

By Steven Greenhut
06/12/2018
Sacramento Two mid-sized California cities, Irvine and Stockton, have topped a national list of financially healthy governments compiled by an influential watchdog group. Irvine’s top ranking shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that the affluent Orange County city has long been a model for prudence, despite some high-profile spending miscues over the years. But the second-place ranking...

TAGS: irvine, Stockton

Union Greed Drives California to Bankruptcy

By Steven Greenhut
04/01/2013
Few non-local people pay much attention to the goings-on in Stockton, a hard-pressed Gold-Rush-era industrial city of 300,000 that sits in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley at the eastern edge of the California Delta. But bondholders, taxpayers and government officials throughout the country will be listening to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Klein’s expected ruling...

TAGS: California Public Employees Retirement System, San Joaquin Valley, Stockton, Stockton bankruptcy

The Bankruptcy Dominoes Begin to Fall in California

By Steven Greenhut
07/23/2012
First, Vallejo, in 2008. Next, Stockton, then Mammoth Lakes and, now, San Bernardino and soon, perhaps, Compton. As Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach told Bloomberg News, the bankruptcy dominoes are starting to fall. One California city after another – following a decade-long spree of ramping up public-employee pay and pension benefits, as well as redevelopment...

TAGS: Stockton