Far West

LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles County district attorney's office spokeswoman confirmed that prosecutors launched an inquiry in November into an ethics complaint made by a private citizen against county assessor John Noguez.

Stockton, Calif.'s announcement that it may cease general fund payments toward debt service on hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds, and take initial steps towards bankruptcy, is still shaking out in the market.

WASHINGTON — House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., urged Congress on Monday to "go big" on deficit reduction before the November election and said he believes there is "broad consensus" for a comprehensive plan similar to those proposd by the Bowles-Simpson and Domenici-Rivlin commissions.

Stockton, Calif., City Council members will be asked Tuesday to stop making general fund payments toward several bond issues and to take the first step toward a Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing, according to a disclosure statement filed Friday on the MSRB's EMMA website.

Some issuers of transit bonds are concerned that the transportation bill pending in the House might hurt their credit ratings.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board released a long-range plan to improve transparency in the muni market by collecting a wide range of new information from a variety of sources, integrating that data on the Electronic Municipal Market Access system, and making it available to investors and other market participants in a more user-friendly and searchable format.

Faced with the nation's highest foreclosure and unemployment rates, Nevada political leaders decided last year that they needed a plan to not only vault the state out of its current economic trough, but flatten out the peaks and valleys of its boom-and-bust economy.

LOS ANGELES — California Controller John Chiang and state Sen. Kevin de León, D-L.A., unveiled legislation on Tuesday to recast a bond-based program encouraging cost-effective retrofits of commercial buildings throughout the state.

WASHINGTON — A Fluvanna County, Va., circuit court judge on Thursday dismissed the lawsuit the county's Board of Supervisors had filed against their former financial advisor, Davenport & Co., after agreeing with the firm that the court could not decide the case under the state constitution's separation of powers doctrine.

Washington House Democrats proposed a budget this week that would close a $1 billion gap in the state’s current two-year budget.