Far West

Former President Bill Clinton strongly urged Washington Tuesday to pass a national infrastructure bank bill and encouraged state and local governments to embrace more public-private partnerships.

National Public Finance Guarantee confirmed that Weil, Gotshal & Manges was hired to replace Winston & Strawn as its counsel in the Stockton and San Bernardino bankruptcy proceedings.

A report by the San Diego Independent Budget Analyst found that the $898 million originally estimated as the city's cost to repair aging infrastructure may be outdated.

If a budget is not passed soon, Washington State agencies face shutdowns and employees face temporary layoffs starting July 1.

A Washington, D.C. PACE green energy program completed its first financing, the District Department of the Environment announced.

The sentencing dates of more convicted municipal bond bid-riggers have been pushed back, according to documents filed with the U.S. district Courts for the Southern District of New York and Western District of North Carolina, as prosecutors seek stiffer penalties for price-fixing of investment contracts.

If the tax exemption for municipal bonds had been repealed in 2012, up to 892,000 jobs. $46.9 billion of labor income and $71 billion annually in gross domestic product would have been lost, according to a new U.S. Conference of Mayors report.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval withdrew legislation that would have allowed the state to issue liquor-tax backed general obligation bonds.

Michael Decker's recent letter offers nine criticisms of our report on municipal bond markups. I briefly address his comments in the order they appear so your readers can evaluate his arguments fairly.

Seattle public finance law firm Gottlieb Fisher PLLC, which ranked 55th nationally as bond counsel last year, has joined Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson.