ABSTRACT
During late 1960s and early 1970s, general obligation (GO) debt was being issued by the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota and its various overlapping governmental units at an extremely rapid pace. As the debt grew, the rating agencies looked more closely at Saint Paul and city's bond rating dropped from AAA to AA. On April 15, 1977, a joint debt advisory committee was formed. A technical advisory staff was appointed to assist Joint Debt Advisory Committee. Led by Saint Paul's budget director, it included staff from each of the participating governmental entities, along with their fiscal consultants. The fiscal consultant prepared a new debt study, and presented it to the committee. This 1986 report, Debt Comparison of the City of Saint Paul with Comparable Cities, compared credit data used by Moody's Investors Service in the ranking of Saint Paul and 20 similar cities and documented the change from 1977 to 1986 in a number of key debt measures and ratios.
