Far West

WASHINGTON — President Obama Thursday signed a $17.6 billion jobs bill that enables municipal issuers to receive direct, Build America Bond-style payments from four types of tax-credit bonds.

WASHINGTON — The Senate yesterday voted 68 to 29 to pass a $17.6 billion jobs bill requiring the Treasury Department to provide Build America Bond-style direct payments to municipal issuers of four types of tax-credit bonds, if they want them, instead of offering tax credits to investors.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury and Education departments yesterday allocated $11 billion of authority for states and large local educational agencies to issue $11 billion of qualified school construction bonds this year.

The House yesterday unanimously approved a bill that would provide a three-month extension of aviation programs, including airports’ ability to collect fees they use to back bonds. The bill also includes provisions that would change how some surface transportation funds are distributed.

SAN FRANCISCO — California is preparing another multibillion-dollar general obligation bond sale next week with a backdrop of both bad news and good news.

WASHINGTON — In a turnaround over a controversial test, the Internal Revenue Service has withdrawn seven notices that had threatened the tax-exempt status of 12 solid-waste bond issues sold for Atlanta-based Georgia-Pacific LLC over a nine-year period.

WASHINGTON — Moody's Investors Service plans in mid-April to move to a global scale for its municipal bond ratings so that they are more in line with its corporate debt ratings, after postponing the initiative during the height of the financial crisis.

SAN FRANCISCO — Standard & Poor's downgraded Vallejo's certificates of participation to an underlying C rating from B yesterday as the California city inched closer to completing a bankruptcy restructuring that may include a debt-service moratorium.

WASHINGTON — Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd yesterday introduced a massive, reworked financial regulatory reform bill that would require the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal securities office to report directly to the SEC chairman, significantly raising the profile of the muni market.

WASHINGTON — The Build America Bonds program would be extended for three years, but the direct-pay subsidy rate would shrink from the current 35% of interest costs to 33% in 2011, 31% in 2012 and 30% in 2013, under a draft of a second jobs bill unveiled yesterday by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich.