Far West

WASHINGTON — Market participants slammed the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s new draft Rule G-43 for broker’s brokers, calling it everything from irresponsible to anti-competitive.

Asset managers, a state pension fund, investment advisers, and a consumer group are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission not to eliminate references to credit ratings from its Rule 2a-7 on money market funds, warning that funds and investors would be harmed as a result.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing the bonds of two issuers based in Florida — a health care provider and a community development district.

SAN FRANCISCO — Vallejo’s steep road out of bankruptcy has begun to level off, after one of its strongest opponents stopped fighting the California city’s plan to exit bankruptcy.

WASHINGTON — The Great Recession significantly widened states’ pension and retiree health care funding shortfalls, the Pew Center on the States concluded in a report released Tuesday.

SAN FRANCISCO — The city of Montebello in Los Angeles County, with more than $100 million in debt, may go bankrupt if it is unable to get a bridge loan in the next six months, according to a city official.

Calls for the elimination of tax-exempt interest could seriously disrupt the municipal bond market, while incremental action to rein in the tax-exempt interest cost to the federal government is more likely than an all-out end to munis, market observers with the Bond Dealers of America said Monday.

The agency that runs the long-struggling San Joaquin Hills toll road in California is asking for a nod from bondholders to restructure its debt portfolio to stay afloat.

With federal financial regulators scrutinizing Rhode Island's bond offerings and pension disclosures, the state has hired disclosure counsel to review its practices and pave the way to issuing new bonds.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has closed its audit of $308 million of variable-rate bonds issued by Murray City, Utah, in a 2003 conduit health care transaction without any change to the bonds’ tax-exempt status.