Bonds

The House overwhelmingly passed a bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration for the next five years and granting $4 billion per fiscal year to the Airport Improvement Project. The bill, the Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act, was passed in a 351-69 bipartisan vote, and will now move on to the Senate
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Oklahoma’s attorney general is pursuing potential legal action against parties that may have illegally profited off of huge demand for electricity and natural gas during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, which led to nearly $2.9 billion of bonds being sold last year to cover extraordinary costs incurred by four utility companies.  AG Gentner Drummond announced Tuesday
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Data standardization across the municipal market will likely take years and much discussion to pinpoint the issues and how the market can solve them. Some of the apparent problems were discussed at the Brookings Municipal Finance Conference where Marc Joffe, federalism and state policy analyst at the Cato Institute, presented his paper outlining them. “If
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Desert Community College District in California saw its general obligation rating upgraded by Moody’s Investors Service by one notch to Aa1 affecting $511.5 million of debt. The outlook was revised to stable from positive. The upgrade “reflects the district’s large and growing tax base and improving financial position,” Moody’s analysts wrote in Monday’s report. The
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Rising costs, particularly for wages, are pressuring K-12 school districts, colleges and universities, possibly leading to strained budgets, credit negative responses and labor strife, according to Moody’s Investors Service.  While inflation growth has slowed, its effects linger. The consumer price index was up 3% from June 2022 to June 2023, marking the smallest 12-month increase
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Environmentally friendly infrastructure got a big boost just before California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the budget on July 1 and then again last week through a grant-funding program. With the budget shortfall this year, lawmakers scrambled to tap the state’s cap-and-trade program and other non-general fund sources to sustain ongoing programs. California lawmakers added money
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Municipal financial advisors saw $146.805 billion of business in 2,685 transactions in the first half of 2023, down from $167.727 billion in 3,484 deals over the same time period in 2022. Municipal Capital Markets Group, Columbia Capital Management and Caine Mitter and Associates moved into the top 10, while Baker Tilly Municipal Advisors, Stifel Nicolaus
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Despite wide expectations for declining revenues, big-ticket tax cuts were on the agenda in state legislatures across the Northeast during the most recent budget negotiation periods. With a slowdown in economic activity expected going into fiscal 2024 after a strong post-COVID rebound, almost every state in the region passed or is still negotiating tax cuts
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Federal Reserve officials were less united at their June meeting than their unanimous decision suggested, as some favored interest-rate increases but went along with the move to leave policy unchanged. “Almost all participants judged it appropriate or acceptable to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 5% to 5.25%,” minutes from the
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Investment losses last year eroded funding ratio gains achieved a year earlier by Chicago’s pension system, casting a shadow over a healthy pickup of taxes on the city’s audited financial results. The city’s overall net position for accounting purposes deteriorated to negative $27.6 billion in 2022 from negative $27.1 billion in 2021 due to growth
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Another $42 billion worth of infrastructure spending dedicated to improving broadband connectivity is now moving from federal to state coffers, spurring comparisons to electrification efforts under the New Deal nearly a century ago and potentially kickstarting additional bond issuance. The Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program flows from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and is aimed
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