Infrastructure

SAN FRANCISCO - As the auction-rate securities market meltdown raged this spring, San Francisco International Airport rushed to restructure hundreds of millions of dollars of ARS with variable-rate demand obligations, trying to beat other issuers to the market before liquidity dried up.

WASHINGTON — State officials and lawmakers Friday were holding emergency meetings and pressing the Treasury Department to rescue public transit deals facing billions of dollars of payments.

DALLAS - With a deadline less than a month away, the North Texas Tollway Authority managed to complete the takeout of $3.5 billion of bond anticipation notes with the sale of $425 million of revenue bonds last week.

In separate actions Tuesday, Fitch Ratings took a negative view of both the seaport and airport revenue bonds of the Northern Mariana Islands Commonwealth Ports Authority.

The California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority on Wednesday authorized the issuance of up to $20 million of clean renewable energy bonds for the California Department of Transportation.

CHICAGO - Despite reservations about a still-weak market and uncertainty surrounding the federal highway trust fund, Ohio this week sold $375 million of grant anticipation revenue vehicle bonds, its largest Garvee deal ever.

Miami-Dade County commissioners, meeting Tuesday, authorized up to $1.9 billion of aviation revenue bonds to continue work on Miami International Airport’s $6.2 billion capital improvement program.

The National Conference of State Legislatures is pushing for a temporary increase in the federal gasoline tax as part of its pitch to Congress on how the nation's highway funding program should be revamped. But states like Texas do not support a hike in the tax because they already get a disproportionately lower amount of funding from the program compared to the tax revenue they contribute.

WASHINGTON - A Richmond circuit court judge for the second time dismissed a lawsuit challenging Virginia's planned transfer of the Dulles Toll Road from the state's Department of Transportation to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The MWAA is slated to oversee the $5.2 billion Metrorail extension to Dulles International Airport that will be partly financed by $2 billion of tax-exempt bonds.

Transportation systems throughout the U.S. are looking to address a backlog of needed capital projects, yet at the same time volatility in the municipal bond market and a changing investor base have made financing transportation infrastructure more challenging.