Shelly Sigo

ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida will need full funding to build a high-speed rail network from Tampa to Orlando, and eventually on to Miami, Nazih Haddad, chief operating officer for the state’s new Florida Rail Enterprise program, said yesterday.

BRADENTON, Fla. — Federal prosecutors in Alabama Wednesday recommended that former Jefferson County Commission president Larry Langford be sentenced to a minimum of 24 years and four months and a maximum of 30 years and five months in prison.

BRADENTON, Fla. — The Florida Legislature will consider implementing the state’s first-ever intercept program designed to provide credit enhancement for municipal bonds.

The official groundbreaking took place last week in Broward County on the Interstate 595 Express Corridor Project, a nearly $2 billion public-private partnership with I-595 Express LLC, a subsidiary created by ACS Infrastructure Development.

Standard & Poor’s last week raised its rating on the Huntsville Solid Waste Disposal Authority’s solid-waste revenue bonds to AA-plus from AA.

BRADENTON, Fla. — The bond financing for Nashville’s proposed new convention center has been delayed pending action on a bill by the Legislature that, if passed, would grant an exception to Tennessee’s usury law regulating interest rates on municipal debt.

BRADENTON, Fla. — The Georgia Department of Transportation on Friday released its solicitation for qualified firms to do the state’s first public-private partnership, a plan called the West by Northwest Project that is designed to bring needed traffic-congestion relief to metropolitan Atlanta.

BRADENTON, Fla. — A federal judge in Alabama Friday sentenced Montgomery bond dealer Bill Blount to four years and four months in prison and lobbyist Al LaPierre to four years in prison for their pay-to-play roles in the refinancing of Jefferson County’s $3.2 billion of now-failed sewer warrants.

BRADENTON, Fla. - A federal judge in Alabama today sentenced Montgomery bond dealer Bill Blount to 52 months in prison and lobbyist Al LaPierre to 48 months in prison for their pay-to-play roles in the refinancing of Jefferson County’s $3.2 billion of now-failed sewer warrants.

BRADENTON, Fla. — A Jefferson County, Ala., circuit court judge Thursday ordered U.S. Bank to release $27.4 million so the county could make an arbitrage rebate payment on the 2004 fixed-rate school warrants that the county defaulted on earlier this month.

BRADENTON, Fla. — A myriad of options, including the use of pension bonds, are being considered in Atlanta, where spending on retirement benefits has soared to 20% of the city’s $523 million annual operating budget and the unfunded liability is now $1.5 billion.

In a special report Monday, Fitch Ratings said negative rating actions against Florida credits last year outpaced positive actions by three-to-one, but the agency expects ratings to stabilize in 2010.

Palm Beach County commissioners Tuesday selected Ruden McClosky Smith Schuster & Russell PA to be bond counsel and to perform related legal services related to the development of a planned convention center hotel.

A long-planned project to expand the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex with a domed stadium may be slowed once again because of the recession.

BRADENTON, Fla. — Former Montgomery, Ala., bond dealer William Blount and lobbyist Albert LaPierre are scheduled to be sentenced Friday in Alabama federal court after pleading guilty to pay-to-play charges related to Jefferson ­County’s troubled sewer debt.

BRADENTON, Fla. — On the heels of an upgrade for its Garvees, Kentucky tomorrow plans to sell $90 million of the debt for work related to its share of the massive $4.1 billion Louisville-Southern Indiana Ohio River Bridges Project.

After receiving a federal loan commitment Tuesday, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia yesterday announced it would soon sell $2.53 billion of municipal bonds for the project. The U.S. Department of Energy said MEAG would receive approximately $1.8 billion in loan guarantees toward construction of its share of two new nuclear units being planned at Plant Vogtle in Georgia.

Miami-Dade County expects to be in the market early next week for a two-day pricing of $600 million of water and sewer bonds — the first round of large yearly debt sales for a newly revised $4.2 billion capital improvement program.

Standard & Poor's Tuesday raised the underlying rating on the Lamar County School District's general obligation bonds two notches to A from BBB-plus based primarily on its rapidly expanding property tax base and good income levels.

Kentucky's general fund receipts fell 3.3% in January compared to January 2009, a decrease of $23.9 million.