The Detroit federal judge overseeing mediation of the city’s $18 billion bankruptcy met with Michigan’s top two Republican lawmakers to gauge their willingness to help resolve the largest municipal insolvency in U.S. history, Bloomberg News reported today. The leaders of the state legislature met with U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen in December, their representatives said this week. The bankruptcy is politically sensitive in Michigan’s Republican-controlled House and Senate, where lawmakers have proposed using a $971 million surplus to cut taxes. Talks with lawmakers are continuing, a person familiar with the matter said. Any aid from the state legislature would mark a change in the Republican party’s treatment of the heavily Democratic city, Michigan’s largest. Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who faced lawsuits for authorizing the bankruptcy, has said he opposes a state bailout that only focuses on debt.
