Far West

SAN FRANCISCO — A California Senate committee has approved a bill designed to clear up legal concerns that have prevented the issuance of more than $770 million of qualified school construction bonds.

SAN FRANCISCO — Get cracking on the budget. Or California faces another ugly cash crisis.

The U.S. Department of Energy has extended its deadline to Jan. 29 from Jan. 15 for receiving responses to a request for information from state development finance agencies that want to participate in a new federal loan guarantee program.

WASHINGTON — Municipal securities dealers, their finance professionals, and political action committees will have to disclose most contributions they make to bond ballot election campaigns under Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board rule changes the Securities and Exchange Commission approved Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — Harvard University has been tapped for one of roughly 40 audits the Internal Revenue Service is conducting this year to examine the financial and business practices of tax-exempt colleges and universities.

SAN FRANCISCO — California’s East Bay Municipal Utility District plans to issue more than $1 billion of debt over the first half of this year, as it continues to deal with the fallout from the financial crisis and seeks to take advantage of low interest rates and subsidies that the ­federal government has used to respond to the crisis.

WASHINGTON — Market participants worried yesterday that the Obama administration’s plan to limit the size and certain trading activities of banks could adversely affect firms’ tender option bond programs, which provide money market funds with safe municipal investments.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s ruling allowing corporations to use their own funds for ads to support or oppose candidates does not appear to have implications for the Municipal ­Securities Rulemaking Board’s Rule G-37, which ­restricts municipal dealers’ political ­contributions to issuer officials, lawyers said.

WASHINGTON — A Wells Fargo & Co. shareholder has filed suit against 13 top officials at the bank, alleging they committed a breach of fiduciary duty, abuse of control, and gross mismanagement by permitting the bank to continue to participate in sale-in, lease-out transactions after the federal government warned they were illegitimate tax shelters.

WASHINGTON — In a new challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement jurisdiction over certain swaps, attorneys for two former JPMorgan bankers that secured swap transactions for the firm with Jefferson County, Ala., are urging a federal judge to throw out most of the securities fraud charges the SEC filed against them in November.