Yvette Shields

CHICAGO — The Regional Transportation Authority of Illinois board yesterday approved a $140 million taxable working cash-flow note issue that will help the agency keep Chicago-area buses and trains in service as it awaits its overdue state aid.

CHICAGO — Iowa, an earlier user of Build America Bonds, won't draw on that program again for two upcoming sales because the savings are not worth the worries over heightened scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service, Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald said yesterday.

CHICAGO — Illinois’ debt manager returns tomorrow from an overseas tour where he sought to whet the appetites of European and Asian institutional buyers for his beleaguered state’s paper ahead of a $900 million taxable Build America Bond sale.

Moody’s Investors Service revised to positive from stable its outlook on $87 million of A3-rated debt from Green Bay-based Bellin Memorial Hospital due to improved operating performance.

After cutting $650 million to balance the fiscal 2011 budget, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon last week announced another $300 million in reductions due to revised revenue projections.

Moody’s Investors Service has revised its outlook to negative from stable on Hamline University’s Baa1 rating ahead of its $15 million refunding bond issue this week.

CHICAGO — The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a review of a failed investment by five southeastern Wisconsin school districts in collateralized debt obligations that were intended to establish trusts to pay the districts’ non-pension retiree health care benefits.

CHICAGO — St. Louis-based Stern Brothers & Co. last week announced the opening of two new public finance offices — in Detroit and Seattle — as part of the firm’s national expansion.

CHICAGO — Prosecutors in the federal corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich sought in testimony this week to link a loan to businessman Joseph Aramanda from consultant Robert Kjellander to an alleged scheme by Blagojevich and three associates to personally profit from the state’s $10 billion pension bond sale.

CHICAGO — Illinois’ state universities should have sufficient liquidity to meet their fiscal obligations, at least through November, under a newly approved power to borrow against late state payments and an infusion of tuition revenue expected in late August, Moody’s Investors Service reported in its latest credit outlook.

CHICAGO — The Chicago Board of Education yesterday voted during an emergency meeting to authorize the establishment of an $800 million line of credit to boost its liquidity as it grapples with late aid payments and uncertainty over state funding levels in fiscal 2011.

Standard & Poor’s lifted the ratings of 14 school districts and municipalities in Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio last week as part of the agency’s regular surveillance.

Moody’s Investors Service last week raised Missouri State University’s auxiliary system revenue bonds one notch to A1 due to the completion of a multipurpose arena that has generated additional revenue to support debt service.

The Kansas City Council late last week authorized $250,000 in convention and tourism funds to preserve the city’s option to purchase its preferred site for a new convention center hotel downtown.

Illinois regulators last week approved nonprofit Chicago-based Resurrection Health Care’s sale of two suburban Chicago hospitals to Tennessee-based for-profit Vanguard Health Systems.

CHICAGO — Illinois’ general obligation rating slid further down the scale on Friday when Fitch Ratings downgraded the state to A from A-plus, blaming leaders’ failure to tackle the state’s fiscal and liquidity crisis in the next budget.

CHICAGO — Wisconsin will competitively sell $800 million of one-year operating notes tomorrow and is gearing up to issue about $200 million of new-money transportation revenue bonds next month, while a planned general obligation refunding remains on hold.

CHICAGO — Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and several associates expected to reap $500,000 from an $809,000 consultant’s fee paid by Bear, Stearns & Co. for its role as book-runner on the state’s $10 billion 2003 pension bond sale, an aide said in testimony this week during the disgraced ex-governor’s federal corruption trial.

CHICAGO — The Illinois Finance Authority board this week gave final approval to deals for OSF Healthcare System and NorthShore University Health System that will raise new money for each and shift outstanding variable-rate debt to fixed rate to reduce market and liquidity risks.

CHICAGO — The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority will enter the market as soon as tomorrow with roughly $400 million of fixed-rate refunding bonds, the first of two sales planned this year to restructure a chunk of the agency’s synthetically fixed-rate debt to reduce bank and liquidity risks.