America's Biggest City Governments Are Still Struggling to Recover From the Recession

The nation and indeed the world have been following the ongoing fiscal catastrophe in Detroit, the largest municipal government in history to file for bankruptcy protection. But while Detroit’s financial woes are outsized, they're far from unique. The problem of declining revenues and increasing costs, compounded by the effects of the Great Recession, has been a troubling trend for local governments for years now.

In many, if not most, of America’s major cities, the revenue that the government needs to operate – to pick up trash, police the streets, pay its workers’ pensions – remains far from what it was before the economic crisis.