Jim Watts

DALLAS — Members of the Dallas City Council were enthusiastic last week about a plan to keep a college football game in its long-time home with stadium improvements financed by $25.5 million of certificates of obligation.

DALLAS — Oklahoma's two-year streak of monthly revenue growth was halted in March by a drop in energy production tax collections due to a prolonged fall in natural gas prices.

Preliminary, unaudited figures indicate New Orleans balanced its budget in 2011, according to chief administrative officer Andy Kopplin.

A proposal to issue $325 million of revenue bonds to upgrade and repair state rural roads was approved by the Louisiana House Tuesday without a dissenting vote.

DALLAS — Dallas would issue up to $25.5 million of 10-year certificates of obligation to upgrade the city-owned Cotton Bowl stadium under a plan outlined Monday to the City Council's budget and finance committee.

DALLAS — Kansas lawmakers will return to Topeka in three weeks to resolve differing version of the state's $14.1 billion budget proposal for fiscal 2013 after an agreement fell apart over the weekend.

Travis County District Judge John Dietz said last week he intends to combine four lawsuits challenging Texas’ school finance laws into a single case. A fifth group of plaintiffs will be included as interveners in one of them.

The Dallas City Council last week approved a request by Uplift Education for up to $90 million of tax-exempt bonds to build new charter public schools in Dallas and Fort Worth.

The first monthly revenues from the 1% increase in Little Rock’s sales tax rate approved last year by voters totaled $3.4 million, the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration said last week.

Standard & Poor’s last week lowered Surprise, Ariz.’s issuer rating to A from AA and assigned a negative outlook.

DALLAS — The Louisiana State Bond Commission approved expanded parameters for a planned refunding of gas and fuels-tax bonds to a maximum of $850 million from the $400 million approved two weeks ago.

DALLAS — Little Rock voters will be asked to extend an existing property tax to support $105 million of general obligation bonds for public works projects under a plan outlined Tuesday by Mayor Mark Stodola.

The Lafayette Metropolitan Expressway Commission will study whether tolls on a six-mile stretch of Interstate 49 will support construction of the portion of the highway in Lafayette.

Completing Interstate 49 through a public-private partnership is one of the five state goals that were outlined last week by Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy.

DALLAS — A $500 million general obligation bond package going to Dallas voters this fall will do little to whittle down the city's $4.4 billion of needed street repairs and reconstruction.

Oklahoma lawmakers are considering $150 million of bonds to finance repairs and renovations at the state capitol that are expected to cost $140 million.

The Kansas House has adopted a bill that would dedicate revenues from state-owned casinos to support of the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, which faces an $8.3 billion shortfall in promised benefits through 2033.

Both chambers of the Kansas Legislature last week adopted versions of a $14 billion budget for fiscal 2013, but differences in the measures will require negotiations by a conference committee.

An independent audit of the Phoenix suburb of Surprise found $16 million of accounting errors that will erase the city’s meager rainy-day fund and blow a $3 million hole in the fiscal 2012 budget.

Phoenix may end fiscal 2013 with a multimillion dollar surplus in a turnaround after posting the city’s biggest deficit ever in 2010.