Jennifer DePaul

Twelve organizations representing the 501(c)(3) bond community submitted comments to a House Ways and Means tax reform working group urging them to protect tax-exempt bond financing.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., filed a motion this week to skip the Senate Finance Committee process and take the online sales tax bill to the Senate floor and hold a vote as early as next week.

The Council of Development Finance Agencies submitted a 14-page legislative package to a House Ways and Means tax reform working group, detailing the need for tax law changes that it said would "modernize and revolutionize" qualified small issue manufacturing bonds.

Moody's Investors Service has placed the general obligation bond ratings of 29 local governments and school districts including Chicago, Cincinnati, and Minneapolis on review for possible downgrade due to its new methodology for analyzing public pension liabilities.

Forty-two state treasurers are again urging tax writing members of Congress to maintain the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds, claiming that any changes will result in long-term adverse ramifications for the country's public infrastructure.

The Government Accountability Office, which offered recommendations for federal government agencies to achieve greater efficiency, said that the application process for money for state revolving funds and other programs is duplicative and costly for communities.

Despite economic growth, the majority of public finance sectors still face a negative outlook for the remainder of 2013, according to a new Moody's Investors Service report.

At least three local government issuers in the past few weeks have announced their intent to redeem Build America Bonds at par value based on the extraordinary redemption provision and the reduced federal subsidy payment due to the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts.

The Education Finance Council submitted a comment letter to a House Ways and Means Committee working group, urging it to revise tax law provisions to allow qualified scholarship funding corporations to use tax-exempt bonds to finance private student loan programs.

The Internal Revenue Service is requesting public comment on existing rules governing when tax-exempt bond proceeds used for reimbursement of expenditures.

Despite his entitlement reform proposals intended to serve as a bargaining chip with Republicans, President Obama's 2014 budget is dead on arrival primarily due to a provision to raise $580 billion in new tax revenues as made clear during two key congressional hearings Thursday.

The $1.2 trillion in automatic, across-the-board spending cuts that went into effect in March will have a low to moderate impact on public finance housing bond issuers, a new Moody's Investor Service report said Tuesday.

Pensions are expected to pose a continued, and in some cases, rising source of budgetary pressure for local governments, a new Fitch Ratings report found.

The IRS is auditing $10.24M of bonds issued by the town of Castle Rock, Colo., in 2008.

A former director of the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond office is warning the agency that proposed regulations for whistleblowers will substantially diminish the positive impact of the program for the TEB office and the IRS office of federal, state and local governments.

Fourteen Democratic Senators strongly urged President Obama not to cap or eliminate the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds because it would have a negative impact on both federal and local budgets and ultimately be "inappropriate and shortsighted."

Iowa state auditor David Vaudt was named the next chairman of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, succeeding current chairman Robert Attmore.

The number and scope of investment projects will decrease for state and local governments if a federal limit is placed on tax-exemption for municipal bonds, the National League of Cities warned in a survey released Thursday.

The IRS' tax-exempt bond office published the first in a series of announcements for available allocations of national bond volume cap for tribal economic development bonds.

Municipal market participants do not think President Obama's $21 billion multi-pronged infrastructure proposals will gain traction from the issuer community or lawmakers on Capitol Hill.