Naomi Jagoda

Pension risks for state and local governments will continue to be higher than those for corporations, Moody's Investors Service said in a report Thursday.

The District of Columbia's new chief financial officer will likely oversee the issuance of more than $1 billion of bonds in fiscal 2015 and hopes to develop a plan that assesses D.C.'s capital challenges and how best to meet them over the long term.

Leaders on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee said they reached an agreement on principles for a surface transportation reauthorization bill and suggested funding could be raised through tax reform.

The federal government ran a $36.9 billion deficit in March, the Treasury Department reported Thursday.

Consumer credit increased by $16.5 billion, or 6.4%, in February to $3.130 trillion, the Federal Reserve reported Monday.

The Build America Bond program would be permanently revived with lower subsidy rates and without issuers being hurt by sequestration cuts, under a bill recently introduced in the Senate.

The Senate Finance Committee Thursday passed a bill that extends a number of expired and expiring tax provisions, including some related to bonds, state and local governments, and Puerto Rico.

Municipal market participants should be concerned about the House Republican fiscal 2015 budget plan unveiled by Rep. Paul Ryan on Tuesday because it calls for substantially lowering the individual and corporate tax rates, which would put at risk many tax expenditures such as the tax exemption for municipal bonds, several muni experts said.

The National Association of Local Housing Finance Authorities has told House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp in a letter that it opposes the provisions in his tax-reform plan that eliminate tools used to finance affordable homeownership and rental housing.

Bond lawyers need to be realistic and acknowledge that there will be changes to the existing issue price rules, the chair of a panel at a conference said.

A Treasury Department official told bond lawyers to view the municipal bond provisions in House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp's tax reform plan as a "scorecard of revenue offsets" that can be used in other tax proposals.

The Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners has authorized the potential refinancing of $59.6 million of Build America Bonds issued in 2010 because the subsidy payments to the issuer have been reduced due to sequestration.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board unanimously voted not to delay the implementation of new reporting requirements for governments that provide their employees with pensions, after the Government Finance Officers Association and other groups pressed for a postponement.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp said that he plans for the committee to work to determine which tax provisions that expired at the end of last year should be made permanent.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service are seeking recommendations for items that should be included on the 2014-2015 priority guidance plan.

State treasurers need to explain to Congress how the Joint Committee on Taxation's estimated cost of the tax exemption for municipal bonds is problematic, a leading muni expert said.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore. wants the committee to vote early next month on legislation that would renew tax provisions that expired at the end of last year, a committee spokeswoman said.

Existing home sales fell 0.4% to a seasonally adjusted 4.60 million-unit rate in February from an unrevised 4.62 million pace the previous month, the National Association of Realtors announced Thursday.

The Federal Reserve will reduce its monthly asset purchases by $10 billion in April and altered its forward guidance on unemployment to say rates will stay low "until the outlook for the labor market has improved substantially in a context of price stability," the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement released Wednesday following the committee's two-day meeting.

The Internal Revenue Service rejected requests by bond issuers for two affiliated Iowa nonprofits to enter voluntary closing agreements, saying that certain alleged tax-law violations were unlikely to have occurred.