Last summer, residents of Maywood, Calif., woke up one morning to find the government as they knew it gone. After years of corruption and mismanagement, the small, blue-collar city south of Los ...

Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Katrina Ávila Munichiello is an experienced editor, writer, fact-checker, and proofreader ...