Far West

The transportation sector will spend next year looking for opportunities to achieve limited legislative goals, while hoping to stay out of the way of lawmakers who may have to slash funds in ongoing efforts to deal with the debt crisis.

President Obama is urging lawmakers to put together a package to avoid the fiscal cliff with the next 10 days.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury Friday denied the California Public Employees' Retirement System's request to be allowed to sue San Bernardino in California state court over $6.9 million in missed pension payments.

Steve A. Chamberlin has been tapped to serve as acting director of the Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond office, officials said.

State and local governments will be able issue a total of $33.170 billion of private-activity bonds under a national volume cap next year: 1.1% or $349.01 million more than in 2012.

Moody's Investors Service upgraded District of Columbia senior ballpark revenue bonds to A2 from A3 and subordinate bonds to A3.

The SEC approved rule changes that would allow underwriters to fulfill some new-issue reporting requirements by filing information with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.'s New Issue Information Dissemination Service, or NIIDS.

In a report, Standard & Poor's found that most of the 202 California cities it rates made it through the recession with their reserves and credit quality intact.

U.S. attorneys asked a federal judge Monday to order former executives of a General Electric Co. affiliate to pay $6.9 million in restitution to municipal bond issuers for rigging bids on municipal bond reinvestment contracts.

The mere threat of including a 28% cap on the value of municipal tax exemption in a fiscal cliff deal has already caused munis to be more expensive for issuers and, if adopted, will fundamentally change the market, analysts and government groups warned Thursday.