The Worst Of Times For 2 Cities

A city is a city in a great state often seen as a battleground in the presidential elections. The other occupies a square mile in wasted smallest state in the nation.

While disparate, they share the spotlight municipal distress, struggling to avert bankruptcy. Rating-agency roundtable and webcast panelists include law firms in the same sentence.

A major factor linking Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Central Falls, RITheir states recently moved preventive or hoping to avert a bankruptcy filing by the cities or in the case of Rhode Island, to avoid "contagion" or a domino effect of downgrades of any state, or even that of the state itself.

"Harrisburg and Central Falls occur at the same time, and in both cases their states passed legislation almost on the fly to consolidate the situation and help cities through her work," said Alan Schankel , head of fixed income strategy and research for Janney Capital Markets.

Bond and legal experts cite repression by states."You have a problem of possible contagion, an image problem and a political issue, to name a few," Stephen Murphy, managing director of Standard & Poor's said in Harrisburg.

The contagion, however, has not affected the Dauphin County, which includes Harrisburg. Standard & Poor in March revised its outlook for the county general obligation bonds to stable from negative, while affirming its AA long-term rating.

Harrisburg, meanwhile, has a $ 3.3 million payment due Sept. GO15, the same month that it could run out of money, adding a sense of urgency in the capital of Pennsylvania. The bond insurer Assured Guaranty Corp. has a Municipal trials against Harrisburg after covering a payment of $ 450,000 bonds to bondholders of Series 2002A burner on the garbage that the city failed in April 2010.

Narefsky David, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown LLP in Chicago, called the movement "an understandable response by state governments to treat the bankruptcy as a last resort really.

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