San Bernardino, California has been in bankruptcy for four years now. According to a story in Governing Magazine, it's not because of debt or pensions (which tend to be the culprits in other city bankruptcies). Instead, the problem is

San Bernardino’s lengthy and convoluted charter, a document that gives so much authority to so many officials that it’s completely ineffective.

San Bernardino's problems came on gradually:

“It was simply an accumulation of spending more than the revenues they had to support it,” said Andrew Belknap, who is regional vice president of Management Partners and has worked with other struggling California cities.

Belknap said the city’s overly complicated system of checks and balances in its 48-page charter and extreme turnover essentially created a stalled government . . . . The situation was so disorganized that by the time officials realized the full magnitude of the city’s finances, it was too late to declare a financial emergency. Instead, San Bernardino officials had to declare insolvency or they weren’t going to make payroll. “They didn’t have the political and management systems in place to see this coming or act ahead of time,” Belknap said.

It's interesting that something so boring as a city charter could cause such big problems. And it's a cautionary tale for local governments everywhere: Not making expensive promises that are impossible to keep is certainly an important factor in avoiding bankruptcy — but a city also needs to have good, straightforward financial and governance systems in place to keep it on track.