Far West

WASHINGTON — House Ways and Means Committee panel members, researchers, and muni market participants debated the merits and faults of a public-pension disclosure bill Thursday at a hearing that also focused on tax-exempt financing and pension obligation bonds.

SAN FRANCISCO — At its inception the South Bay Expressway toll road was promoted as a model public-private partnership. It took ages to build, then quickly plunged into bankruptcy.

The House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would delay the implementation of rules on municipal and other derivatives imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act by at least 18 months, until after the next presidential election.

WASHINGTON — UBS Financial Services Inc. has agreed to pay more than $160 million to settle antitrust, securities fraud, tax and other charges with three federal agencies and 25 state attorneys general for rigging bids for at least 100 reinvestment transactions in 36 states, threatening the tax-exempt status of more than $16.5 billion of municipal bonds.

CHARLESTON — Congress should give the Securities and Exchange Commission the authority to set baseline standards for issuers’ primary and secondary market municipal securities disclosures, the SEC commissioner charged with conducting a review of the muni market said Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — Municipal and other market participants yesterday urged federal regulators to consider allowing state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, utilities and other end-users in derivatives transactions to provide one set of required disclosures that could be updated when material changes occur.

WASHINGTON — Though several deficit-cutting commissions are recommending Congress and the Obama administration overhaul the tax code and cut tax expenditures, such as the tax-exempt interest from municipal bonds, the head of the Tax Foundation said Tuesday that the budgetary cost of munis is relatively small.

SAN FRANCISCO — California is not Greece, according to Standard & Poor’s. The rating agency said in a report released Tuesday that comparisons between the most populated U.S. state and Greece’s financial quagmire are overblown.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $20 million of Series A bonds issued in December 2005 by the City School District of Middletown in Orange County, N.Y. The audit was disclosed Monday in an event notice the issuer filed with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s online EMMA system.

A majority of the nation’s mayors want the new highway bill coming from Congress to emphasize streets and bridges over highways and to provide financing tools such as Build America Bonds, TIFIA loans or a national infrastructure bank.