Far West

WASHINGTON — The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s municipal securities division plans to honor Citi’s Frank Chin with its 2009 Honor Roll Award at a luncheon today, in recognition of his significant contributions to SIFMA and the muni industry.

WASHINGTON — The public sector should provide 55% or 65% of high-speed rail costs through gasoline and other taxes, Richard Harnish, executive director of the Chicago-based Midwest High Speed Rail Association, said at a conference here Friday.

Fitch Ratings plans to weigh several factors unique to qualified school construction bonds, but will still approach the securities in basically the same way it handles traditional tax-exempt offerings, the agency said in a report to be issued today.

WASHINGTON — The development of a 17,000-mile national high-speed rail network would cost $600 billion, or $30 billion per year through 2030, Andy Kunz, president and chief executive officer of the U. S. High Speed Rail Association, said here at a conference yesterday.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has determined that bonds issued by a university medical school to finance or refinance items used by a nonprofit hospital are considered obligations of a state governmental unit and therefore tax-exempt, the IRS said in a private-letter ruling released this week.

SAN FRANCISCO — California plans one of the biggest long-term tax-exempt bond offerings of the year next week, $3 billion of sales tax-backed economic recovery bonds in a deal created to restructure the state’s outstanding deficit bonds to account for unexpected weakness in sales tax revenue.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — While the “California Dream” was evoked frequently, panelists at this week’s Milken Institute State of the State Conference were more apt to talk about saving the dream than celebrating it.

As it had promised for weeks, the California Redevelopment Association Tuesday filed a lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court to stop a $2.05 billion shift of redevelopment funds from local agencies to help balance the state general fund.

California political leaders continue to deliberate over a potential water infrastructure package, but they were not ready to bring it to a vote this week as had been expected.

In a year when California’s budget writers have borrowed almost $2 billion of local governments’ property tax revenues, and ordered a permanent shift of more than $2 billion in redevelopment funds, their advocates have prepared a ballot measure that would bar such actions in the future.