A judge cleared the 23,000-resident city of Prichard, Ala., to end its five-year-old bankruptcy by moving forward on a plan that cuts pension payments for its workers and retirees and ends its pension system altogether, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge William Shulman confirmed the city's plan during a hearing on Tuesday. Elected leaders put the city into chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in October 2009, saying that it could not afford pension payments even after they had been reduced in an earlier bankruptcy case. Under the new plan, the city's roughly 150 retirees will be paid about 35 percent of their pension payment amount.
