Far West

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service chief counsel’s office has issued guidance that sides with a conduit issuer in Montana and a retirement home operator in a four-year old dispute over whether some of the authority’s bonds are taxable.

SAN FRANCISCO — A long-debated plan to build a 600-room hotel next to the Oregon Convention Center in Portland may be rising from the grave.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — A planned $138 million tax-allocation issue for Fremont’s redevelopment agency is the largest so far this year from RDAs around California rushing to market ahead of their potential demise.

SAN FRANCISCO — Southern California’s Borrego Water District has defaulted on $9.5 million of special-tax bonds owned by Nuveen Asset Management.

House members have proposed almost 600 amendments be added to the continuing resolution needed to keep the federal government operating for the remainder of fiscal 2011, including additional spending cuts that could jeopardize the Los Angeles County Metro extension and other transportation projects.

Senate Banking Committee Republicans worry Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Mary Schapiro and other regulators are rushing to implement rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act without sufficient regard to cost-benefit analyses or public comments.

Proposed federal legislation to standardize pension reporting to a central repository would improve transparency and likely improve pension funding, Moody’s Investors Service said in a special comment released Monday.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority censured and fined Wells Fargo Advisors LLC $12,500 for failing to provide customers and the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board with correct yield information from muni securities transactions.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $7 million of revenue bonds issued in 2007 by the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority for Confluence Energy LLC to finance the construction of a wood-pellet manufacturing plant in Kremmling, Colo.

WASHINGTON — Just one day after the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board issued a draft rule on muni advisers’ fiduciary duties, market participants are questioning the scope of the rule and whether it would apply to brokers engaged in certain activities such as recommending securities in which states and localities could invest general funds.