Bankrupt San Bernardino, Calif., might have to contract out essential services and place a revenue bond on the ballot in 2015 elections after a measure failed this week that would have lowered base pay for police and firefighters, Reuters reported yesterday. Paul Glassman, San Bernardino's bankruptcy attorney, told the federal judge overseeing the city's bankruptcy that a rejection by voters on Tuesday of a pay-cutting ballot measure for police and firefighters was a "gamechanger" that had thrown the restructuring plan off track. Lawyers for San Bernardino's police and fire unions reacted with dismay and anger to what appeared to be an effort by the city to blame the failure of Tuesday's ballot measure on the city's inability to come close to producing a bankruptcy exit plan, 28 months after it entered chapter 9 protection. San Bernardino, a city of 210,000, 65 miles east of Los Angeles, declared bankruptcy in July 2012 with a $45 million budget deficit. Glassman told Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury, after demands by police and firefighter unions for a deadline to produce a bankruptcy plan, that the city would now be unlikely to produce an exit blueprint before the summer of 2015.
