Signs point toward improved economy

If you’re looking for signs that the economy’s on an upswing, there’s progress found in the declining numbers of personal and business bankruptcies filed in North Idaho and Spokane since January.

For the first four months of 2004, 227 fewer bankruptcies have been filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court’s Eastern Washington district. That’s a 6 percent fall-off from the same period in 2003 — which, as a whole, was the fourth straight year of record-setting bankruptcies in the district.

In the Bankruptcy Court’s Idaho district, covering the five northernmost counties, the four-month decline is 8 percent, or 52 fewer bankruptcies than during the same period of 2003. The actual numbers: 527 filings in the first four months of 2003, versus 485 this year so far.

That trend is notable, say Bankruptcy Court officials, because the first part of the year tends to be the highest-volume period.

“People tend to put off filing (for bankruptcy) in December and January,” said Spokane bankruptcy attorney Greg Heline. “Then after the bills come in, the volume usually picks up in February and March and April.”

Heline said he is definitely seeing fewer appointments by people looking to file a personal or business bankruptcy. He’s been in practice for 25 years, with the bulk of his bankruptcy work focused on filing Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 personal bankruptcies.

“My office was getting swamped last year,” he said. Like other area attorneys, he saw the end result of a tough economy on people who were overextended on credit cards, who’d lost jobs or who had tried to start a business and then gave up.

“We were so busy last year, I stopped offering my discount to slow down the work,” Heline said.

So far this year, he’s seen a drop-off that he assumes is connected to an overall economic recovery.

“This could be the first year of seeing that drop-off, as the economy gets better,” he said, although he cautioned, “we’re not at the end of the year yet.”

Another upbeat indicator among the numbers is the decline in overall business bankruptcies filed in Eastern Washington. During the first four months of 2003, 84 businesses went through reorganization or closed their doors. This year, that number is 77 businesses, according to data collected by Jake Woodwell, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Washington.

In Coeur d’Alene, two companies filed for Chapter 11 in 2003 and just one so far this year, according to Tom Murawski, with Bankruptcy Court in Boise.

Last year here, Spokane’s Bankruptcy Court set a record for total number of filings —10,429 compared with 10,154 in 2002, a 3 percent rise.

In 2003 in Idaho, 9,501 people filed for bankruptcy, an 8 percent increase from the 8,779 who filed in 2002. The Coeur d’Alene division also surpassed 2002 in filings: 1,547 for 2003, up from 1,479 the year before.

Both states were in line with national trends; nationwide, 1.6 million bankruptcies were filed, up 5.2 percent from the year before. The one upbeat national number was that 3,500 fewer businesses filed for bankruptcy in 2003 than 2002, according to federal numbers.

No national data is available on total U.S. bankruptcy filings since January of this year, according to the administrative office of the U.S. Courts, in Washington, D.C.

The Eastern Washington court collects filings for every county east of the Cascades. During 2003, 39 percent of bankruptcies filed in Eastern Washington came from Spokane, followed by Yakima (26 percent), the Tri-Cities (17 percent), Wenatchee and Moses Lake (each 8 percent) and Pullman (2 percent).