Professor Frank Shafroth speaks about a bill on bankruptcy protection for municipalities he wrote, in his office at the Arlington Campus. Photo by Alexis Glenn.
By Buzz McClain
Two years after releasing an exhaustive six-city survey of municipalities either in bankruptcy jeopardy or recovery, George Mason University’s State and Local Government Leadership Center continues the conversation on a national platform when it co-hosts a day-long seminar on the subject at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City in April.
Mason assistant professor Frank Shafroth, director of the center at Mason’s School of Politics, Government and International Affairs, will be one of the facilitators in this first-ever event, “Chapter 9 and Alternatives for Distressed Municipalities,” co-hosted by the Volcker Alliance and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The workshop takes place on April 14 in the Benjamin Strong Room of the Federal Reserve.
Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker and Federal Reserve president William C. Dudley will speak at the workshop, which is intended to foster a dialogue on municipalities, the role of Chapter 9 and alternatives for distressed urban centers. U.S. bankruptcy judges Christopher Klein, Thomas Bennett and Steven Rhodes—who presided over the largest municipal bankruptcies in U.S. history—will speak about their experiences and make suggestions to potential changes in federal law.
Shafroth, who helped write the U.S. municipal bankruptcy law in 1988 as director of federal relations of the National League of Cities, will moderate a panel discussion on alternatives to Chapter 9.
“The event is the first in U.S. history to examine the largest municipal bankruptcies in American history and determine what lessons have been learned, in significant part based upon the in-depth reports of George Mason University,” says Shafroth.
Shafroth’s exhaustive studies of fiscal crises in six major U.S. urban centers—including Detroit, San Bernardino, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Providence—were funded by the MacArthur Foundation and were the first academic studies of the crisis that has since seen major cities declare bankruptcy and then struggle to regain positive footing. He has been compiling daily and weekly updates on related news for a national audience for two years.
In 2013 the National Association of Bond Lawyers presented Shafroth with their highest honor, the Bernard P. Friel Medal for distinguished service in the field of public finance.