California

SAN FRANCISCO – The Los Angeles City Council unexpectedly shot down Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to raise electricity prices to fund city electric utility’s transition to renewable energy late Friday.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Vallejo, Calif., City Council approved a new contract with firefighters, cutting its costs and unfunded liabilities as the city moves closer to exiting bankruptcy.

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Department of Education said 12% of the state’s school districts may be unable to meet their financial obligations between now and fiscal 2012.

The City of Industry Urban-Development Agency in California has agreed to pay $500,000 to the federal government to settle alleged tax-law violations and preserve the tax-exempt status of $68.1 million of tax allocation bonds it sold in 2003.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Board of Commissioners late Thursday approved the first part of a big rate hike to fund the utility’s renewable energy efforts, and approved the sale of $720 million of power revenue bonds.

SAN FRANCISCO — A group of California cities and municipal utilities filed suit last week seeking to disqualify a ballot measure designed to erect barriers to publicly owned electricity providers.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Los Angeles Department of Airports plans to sell $898 million of revenue bonds next week to finance the rebuilding of the Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport.

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

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.

SAN FRANCISCO — California’s sales tax on gasoline is dead. But long live higher excise taxes on gasoline.

SAN FRANCISCO — After a legislative kerfuffle that caused a one-week delay, California is on track to return to the bond market next week with a $2 billion general obligation bond deal.

SAN FRANCISCO — The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education agreed Tuesday to send out 5,200 layoff notices in the face of a $640 million budget deficit projected for the next fiscal year.

SAN FRANCISCO — California is back on the bond calendar.

SAN FRANCISCO – California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer asked an Assembly committee Wednesday to approve a cash-management bill designed to make state general obligation bonds more palatable to investors.

SAN FRANCISCO — Standard & Poor’s downgraded Los Angeles late Monday, citing slow action to resolve the city’s budget deficits this year.

SAN FRANCISCO - California has pulled its $2 billion general obligation bond sale off next week's calendar, after the state Legislature failed to approve cash-flow management legislation the State Treasurer's Office was counting on to make the deal more palatable to investors.

SAN FRANCISCO — ­California lawmakers have passed a series of bills in a special session called to address the budget deficit, though they have left some big loose ends.

SAN FRANCISCO — Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the City Council took an ax to the city’s workforce late last week, reacting to warnings that the nation’s second-biggest city faced budget deficits of almost $700 million over the next 17 months.

SAN FRANCISCO — With legislation in the works designed to help California manage its choppy cash flows, the state is preparing to return to the long-term municipal bond market.

Leaders in the nation's second-largest city insisted this week they haven't slipped into the kind of political paralysis that has made it nearly impossible for California to balance its budget and that garnered it the lowest state credit rating in the nation.