California is notorious for its hands-off approach to distressed cities, but Fiona Ma wants to fundamentally change that if she becomes state treasurer, Bloomberg News reported. Ma, a Democrat who’s running against Republican Greg Conlon in November, said that she would establish a website that would list credit ratings and key financial metrics for local governments. As part of that effort, municipal officials seeing fiscal straits ahead could ask for assistance from the treasurer’s office, she said in an interview in San Francisco. “Local governments have to balance every year. They are very limited in what they can do," said Ma, a certified public accountant who currently serves on the state’s board of equalization, which administers some taxes. "We should be looking out for them.” That would mark a shift for California, home to four of the six biggest bankruptcies filed by municipalities in the past quarter century. While the state, through legislation or voter initiatives, has foisted limits on local governments such as on their taxing power and mandated spending, it has no system for monitoring cities that fall in distress. Providing a central portal for local financial information could spur more investment in lesser-known cities by making it easier for bond buyers to assess conditions and risk, said Ma, who has also served in the state Assembly and on the San Francisco board of supervisors.
