Far West

WASHINGTON — Municipal market participants are disappointed that the tax bill signed into law by President Obama Friday does not extend the Build America Bond program and other key bond-related tax incentives, but will urge lawmakers to reconsider them next year.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Alaska’s Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority announced last week that the Federal Highway Administration has released a formal record of decision approving the route it has planned for its planned Knik Arm Crossing bridge project.

SAN FRANCISCO — Oakland is eying a controversial plan to sell bonds to help extend a “holiday” from paying growing public-safety pension liabilities, a return to a strategy the city invented 25 years ago.

WASHINGTON — Bank of America, now Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has returned more than $6.7 billion to its auction-rate securities customers and satisfied its obligations under a settlement announced Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission over alleged abusive ARS sales practices.

WASHINGTON — Three former executives of General Electric Co. subsidiaries — Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm — will stand trial in March 2012 for allegedly participating in wire-fraud schemes and conspiracies in connection with the bidding for investment contracts for municipal bond proceeds over a seven-year period.

SAN FRANCISCO — The bankrupt city of Vallejo, Calif., will be losing its top two finance officials.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — California’s governor-elect, Jerry Brown, has to deliver a budget proposal on Jan. 10.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is giving the market advance notice that, as of Feb. 14, it will begin requiring dealers acting as underwriters, placement agents, or remarketing agents to provide its EMMA website with certain information about the continuing disclosure agreements for new bond issues.

The House is expected Thursday to take up an $857 billion tax package that contains neither an extension of the Build America Bond program nor the increased small issuer limit for bank-qualified bonds, both of which expire Dec. 31.

Brian Thomas, chief financial officer of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, will join PFM Group in January as a managing director in its Los Angeles office, the firm announced Wednesday.