Far West

The Internal Revenue Service has completed an audit of $67.6 million of bonds issued by Washington's Vancouver Downtown Redevelopment Authority in 2003 with no change to the bonds' tax-exempt status, the issuer disclosed this week.

Democrat John Kitzhaber will be back to serve another term as Oregon governor.

Nevada Treasurer Kate Marshall will serve a second term.

Idaho voters Tuesday approved three constitutional amendments that make it easier for governments and agencies to issue revenue bonds.

Longtime Congressman Neil Abercrombie won a resounding election as Hawaii's governor Tuesday, on a night when the state bucked the national Republican trend.

California local finance expert Michael Coleman reported that local school bond and tax measures had their worst showing Tuesday since he began tracking them in 2001.

City Council members of the scandal-plagued city of Bell voted unanimously Tuesday to hold a special election for their own recall.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday that it is giving tribal governments until the end of 2011 to issue the first $1 billion tranche of tribal economic development bonds, in an effort to save the tribes from having to forfeit any unused allocations at year-end.

Lawmakers will go back to the drawing board for a multi-year transportation bill when Republicans take over leadership of the House in January, but market participants think such a bill may have a chance of squeezing through a divided Congress next year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously agreed to propose rules for establishing a broad whistleblower program less than a week after an SEC attorney said the agency has obtained numerous queries from muni market participants interested in reporting abuses for awards.