The “Financial Urgency” provision of the Florida law governing public sector labor relations went all but unnoticed in the courts for nearly fifteen years after it was enacted. That changed dramatically in 2008. Battered by the Great Recession and desperate, some local governments saw Financial Urgency as a possible way out. On its face, the provision allows governments to force public employee unions to bargain when they might otherwise refuse. That, in turn, could permit the employer to enforce cost‐saving changes to labor contracts, a powerful and attractive tool for a local government in financial straits. Predictably, the unions sued. The administrative and court decisions were essentially standing up for local governments. Then the Florida Supreme Court kicked the legs out from under it all in Headley v. City of Miami. Financial Urgency is now effectively meaningless.