An appellate panel has agreed to hear pleas from Wall Street banks who want power restored to John Young, the sewer expert who took over Jefferson County, Ala.'s, system when its leaders got tangled in a corruption scandal but who was ousted earlier this year by the county's bankruptcy judge, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to let bondholders, who had streamed $3.2 billion to the county to fix its leaky sewer system, skip a level in the appeals process. Their rare approval of a direct appeal puts the three-judge panel in position to decide who should run the sewer system's finances throughout the struggling county's bankruptcy case. Jefferson County leaders placed the county, which is home to roughly 658,000 residents and the city of Birmingham, under chapter 9 protection in November, marking the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history. Soon after that, the county's request to take back control of its ailing sewer system---the main source of its financial hardship---was granted by Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Bennett.
