Far West

Costa Mesa, Calif., made national headlines in March with plans to lay off half of its public workers, but officials are hitting roadblocks as they try to implement the plan.

Standard & Poor’s downgraded its underlying rating on the Oxnard Financing Authority’s wastewater revenue bonds four notches to BBB from A-plus. The Dec. 29 action affects $138.9 million of outstanding debt secured by net revenues of Oxnard’s wastewater system.

Standard & Poor’s last Thursday lowered its long-term and underlying rating on two series of Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority bonds just two weeks after Fitch Ratings affirmed the agency’s ratings.

A bipartisan House duo has introduced legislation that would authorize up to $50 billion of tax-credit bonds to be used over six years to finance transportation infrastructure projects, mirroring a bill pending in the Senate and garnering support from lobbyists even as some question whether such bonds could overcome expected hesitancy from investors.

The Illinois Department of Transportation will receive $186 million to continue construction on a high-speed rail line linking Chicago with St. Louis, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Wednesday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sued a Georgia attorney and his client for securities fraud over their failure to disclose the client's criminal indictment in bond documents for $2.96 million of industrial redevelopment revenue bonds sold by Raleigh County, W. Va., in 2006 and 2007 that are now in default.

The Internal Revenue Service's tax-exempt bond office has formed a seven-person team that is using EMMA and other data from the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board to determine if muni bonds were initially offered at prices that raise questions about tax-law compliance.

The Reno, Nev., Redevelopment Agency's financial woes had little impact on Moody's Investors Service's decision to downgrade the city of Reno's general obligation limited-tax bonds a notch to Aa3 from Aa2 and give them a negative outlook, analysts said.

The municipal securities market, still reeling from a handful of proposals President Obama and others offered during the last 14 months that pose the greatest threat to tax-exemption since 1986, may have a year's respite due to partisan bickering in Congress and the forthcoming presidential election, according to tax experts.

In the realm of muni enforcement, the new year will start with the most high-profile federal criminal trial since the mid-1990s, stemming from the Justice Department's extensive probe of bid-rigging.