Stockton's sad fiscal story should be required reading
THE Stockton City Council voted last week to stop paying creditors, putting the municipality on the road to bankruptcy. The story of the Northern California city's roll toward insolvency should be required reading for all California cities.
During the real-estate boom, the formerly dowdy, working-class inland port became a massive bedroom community for the San Francisco Bay Area. Priced out of single-family homes in the terrifying run-up of house prices in the East Bay, the Peninsula and San Francisco itself, thousands of workers became long-range commuters to jobs in the Silicon Valley and elsewhere by settling down in relatively affordable Stockton.
The city of 292,000 is in this mess because it did what cities up and down the state have done: It promised benefits it couldn't afford and borrowed money