The filing came a day after the City Council voted 4 to 3 to approve it, said Brad Koplinski, one of the members who voted in favor of the measure. A lawyer representing the council filed formally for bankruptcy on Wednesday morning, Mr. Koplinski said in a telephone interview.

The filing pitched the city into political confusion. A spokesman for Mayor Linda Thompson said in an e-mail message that only the mayor, with the city solicitor, had the right to file such a claim. The petition listed debts that totaled more than $400 million. The council has been locked in battle with Ms. Thompson for months, voting to reject her state-backed financial bailout plans, largely on the grounds that they demanded too little from creditors. Ms. Thompson, for her part, said the council had no better plan and seemed only to be obstructing plans to ease the city’s financial distress. Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, had also strongly opposed bankruptcy.

An administrator at the bankruptcy court, Brian Rushow, said the city’s application would need to be heard by a judge and that that might not happen this week, as all three of the court’s judges were at a conference in Tampa, Fla.

Supporters of the bankruptcy say it gives the city more leverage in dealing with its many creditors.

“It was an extraordinary step, but it needed to be done,” Mr. Koplinski said.

If the mayor’s rescue plan had been enacted — placing the city into financially distressed status under state law — it would have allowed bondholders and other creditors to be paid off with proceeds of the sale or long-term rental of city assets, he said.

“Everyone on Wall Street would have been paid, and the taxpayers would be left holding the bag,” Mr. Koplinski said.

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