The head of Jefferson County's governing board said that the cash-strapped, 658,000-resident Alabama county intends to file by the end of the year a plan explaining how it will emerge from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. County Commission President David Carrington said that the county is on pace to file its reorganization plan before the start of the new year. The county has been under pressure to move forward on that reorganization plan from bondholders who extended $3.6 billion to fix the county's leaky sewer system. Those bondholders joined other Wall Street firms in accusing county leaders of stalling on the politically unpopular task of raising residents' sewer rates, which have not gone up since 2008.
