While San Bernardino was in economic decline even before the Great Recession and took a big hit from the housing bust, the slide toward bankruptcy has as much to do with the city’s poisonous politics and the outsized influence of public safety employees as with the broader economy… The city calculates that public safety spending now accounts for 73 percent of the general fund budget, with overtime for firefighters cited by McNeely and others as especially burdensome… The firefighters union, for its part, rejects the notion that it is at fault, accusing Mayor Patrick Morris of being “anti-public safety” and questioning the city’s budget numbers.

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