Naomi Jagoda

Triple-A rated Maryland is planning to competitively sell up to $1.268 billion of general obligation bonds on March 4, according to the state treasurer's office.

Congress should pass a short-term transportation bill by mid-March so that the construction season can be as robust as possible, the top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Thursday.

The House on Tuesday passed a bill that expands 529 college savings plans.

Reps. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., and Randy Hultgren, R-Ill., are asking their colleagues to sign a letter urging House leaders to support the tax-exemption for municipal bonds.

Repealing the tax exemption for private-activity bonds would provide revenue to help pay for lowering corporate tax rates, a Congressional Research Service specialist testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday.

Recent trends in the public pension arena "are not all gloom and doom," as most cities' pension funding ratios appear to have stabilized since the low point in 2010, Merritt Research Services said in a recent report.

The debate over the appropriate amount of public funding for professional sports facilities has been reignited in part because of growing revenue in the sports market, according to a report from Wells Fargo Securities.

The Internal Revenue Service issued a favorable private-letter ruling to an issuer who planned to issue governmental and private-activity bonds to finance improvements to water facilities.

The Conroe Industrial Development Corporation in Texas has requested a settlement under the Internal Revenue Service's voluntary closing agreement program to resolve a tax violation relating to bonds it issued in 2008 and 2012.

A tax-reform agreement has to be done by the end of the summer or it will not happen during this Congress, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said Friday.

The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday approved a bill to make the state and local sales tax deduction permanent.

Bipartisan bills on empowerment zone bonds and the ban on new Internet access taxes have recently been introduced in the Senate.

The federal government ran a $17.5 billion budget deficit in January, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday.

The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday approved legislation that bond lawyers said would be helpful for nonprofit organizations.

Two former Senators who were instrumental in tax reform in 1986 said reform should be comprehensive and presidential commitment is very helpful.

The tax exemption for general purpose state and local debt has consistently been one of the biggest corporate tax expenditures since 1975, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

An issuer in Virginia recently disclosed an Internal Revenue Service audit of bonds it issued in 2006, and a borrower in Indiana and an issuer in Pennsylvania disclosed that the IRS has closed audits of their bonds.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said he hopes Congress and the Obama administration can work in a bipartisan way to authorize qualified public infrastructure bonds or another type of bond program.

The Internal Revenue Service is seeking applications from issuers for unused volume cap of new clean renewable energy bonds.

President Obama's fiscal 2016 budget includes several bond proposals that were also in the budget he released last year.