Recently, Standard and Poor’s raised Baltimore City’s bond rating to its highest level in years. As pointed out by the Baltimore Sun, the City’s new double A rating places Baltimore in the same category as cities such as New York City and Nashville. This is noteworthy for a number of reasons.
First, during the early 1990s, several prominent analysts proclaimed Baltimore as being beyond the point of no return. Clearly, that wasn’t true. Those analysts failed to see Baltimore’s potential for attracting young professionals and empty nesters, including to rapidly expanding waterfront neighborhoods. Moreover, Baltimore’s upgrade comes almost exactly one year after Detroit filed for bankruptcy, the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in the history of America.
While Baltimore City still has its fiscal and economic issues, City finances have been generally moving in the right direction. As a final point, other cities, like Atlantic City, New Jersey, are still watching ratings agencies downgrade their bonds more than five years after the previous recession ended.
