Peter Schroeder

WASHINGTON — Virginia has established a set of deadlines for when its counties and large municipalities must determine how much of their recovery zone bond allocations they can use, as well as a framework for recovering and redistributing unused bond authority.

WASHINGTON — Groups representing student loan bond issuers, port authorities, and airports are asking Congress to permanently exempt private-activity bonds from the alternative minimum tax and allow all current PABs to be refinanced to obtain the exemption

WASHINGTON — Guggenheim Partners LLC wants to be the first in the municipal market to “strip” the tax credit from tax-credit bonds and isn’t waiting for the Treasury Department to issue guidance on the matter.

WASHINGTON — The American College of Bond Counsel yesterday named 20 new fellows to its group and announced the nominations of four officers and five new directors to lead the association.

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has introduced legislation that would expand the qualified energy conservation tax-credit bond program to include water conservation bonds, as well as increase the total bond authority for QECBs to $4 billion.

WASHINGTON — Lauding the success of the Build America Bonds, market participants here yesterday turned their attention toward the potential for the program to be extended beyond its current Dec. 31, 2010, expiration.

A law school professor scheduled to speak during an American Bar Association teleconference today will question whether the Obama administration and Congress are attempting to "addict" the municipal market to taxable Build America Bonds.

CHICAGO - Treasury Department officials are looking into whether a glitch in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act could prevent Build America Bond issuers from challenging the Internal Revenue Service in a U.S. District Court in an effort to reclaim federal subsidy payments halted as a result of an audit.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — State insurance regulators are exploring alternatives to credit rating agencies to evaluate the risk found in insurance company portfolios, including the possibility of establishing a nonprofit rating organization of their own.

The National Association of Bond Lawyers plans to host a conference on Nov. 9 during which academics, public officials, and attorneys will discuss the role of taxable debt in the municipal market and other broad-based issues.

WASHINGTON - Municipal issuers and bond attorneys are concerned about when the Build America Bond cash payments issuers plan to use to make debt-service payments could be disrupted or even reclaimed by the Internal Revenue Service if it finds the BABs violate tax laws or rules.

WASHINGTON - A group of bond attorneys specializing in tax matters has offered the Treasury Department several points to consider on forthcoming muni bond tax guidance, particularly how tax credits should be "stripped" from tax-credit bonds and sold separately.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department today will announce the more than 50 tribal governments that have been allocated a total of $1 billion of tax-exempt economic development bonds to finance projects under a new program created by the stimulus law.

WASHINGTON — Michael Mundaca, the acting assistant secretary for tax policy in the Treasury Department, was officially nominated for the post by President Obama on Wednesday, a move that municipal market participants hope will speed up the release of much-awaited guidance for several bond programs.

WASHINGTON — Groundbreaking for new U.S. home construction was up 1.5% in August to 598,000, as private housing permits increased 2.7% to 579,000, according to Commerce Department data released yesterday.

WASHINGTON ‑‑ Groundbreaking for new U.S. home construction was up 1.5% in August to 598,000, as private housing permits increased 2.7% to 579,000, according to Commerce Department data released this morning.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus unveiled health care reform legislation yesterday that would require bond-financed and other nonprofit 501(c)(3) hospitals to conduct regular assessments of community health needs, implement financial assistance programs, and limit how much they could bill certain patients and how far they could go to collect.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department took another crack at long-pending regulations for bond-financed solid-waste disposal facilities yesterday, issuing updated rules for the second time after the original ones proposed in 2004 were criticized.

WASHINGTON — Issuers of direct-pay Build America Bonds will be able to receive their subsidy payments from the Treasury Department electronically beginning in 2010, a top Internal Revenue Service official said yesterday.

The Internal Revenue Service has preliminarily determined that $68.1 million of tax allocation bonds issued by the Industry, Calif., Urban Development Agency in 2003 to finance the acquisition of property, as well as highway and water projects, are hedge bonds and therefore taxable.