Louisiana

DALLAS — Louisiana’s chief budget officer huddled Tuesday and Wednesday with state agency heads, elected officials, and higher education executives on potential spending cuts after determining the state ended fiscal 2010 more than $100 million in the red.

DALLAS — The Louisiana State Bond Commission on Tuesday awarded all the state’s dwindling capacity for Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds to two projects in anticipation that GO Zone bonds already allocated to other projects will be returned to the pool.

DALLAS — Louisiana will take a two-part, $375.3 million general obligation refunding to market Tuesday in a competitive sale, almost six months after the state had scheduled it.

DALLAS — The Louisiana State Bond Commission on Thursday approved $600 million of the state’s dwindling capacity of Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds for an iron and steel project in St. James Parish.

DALLAS — The Louisiana State Bond Commission is expected to allocate $600 million of Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds to a single project at its Thursday meeting.

DALLAS — Voters in East Baton Rouge Parish may have their third chance in 30 months to decide on taxes to support a bond package similar to one that has been rejected twice.

DALLAS — The New Orleans Regional Transit Authority will build two new streetcar lines with proceeds from the upcoming negotiated sale of $75 million of sales tax revenue bonds.

BRADENTON, Fla. — Three Gulf Coast states are trying to beat the deadline to sell billions of dollars of private-activity bonds allocated by Congress in the 2005 Gulf Opportunity Zone Act.

DALLAS — The Federal Emergency Management Agency will make a $1.8 billion lump-sum payment to public school districts in Orleans Parish to rebuild or replace facilities damaged five years ago by Hurricane Katrina. The parish has the same boundaries as the city of New Orleans.

The Louisiana State Bond Commission on Tuesday reserved $600 million of Gulf Opportunity Zone private-activity bonds for an unidentified manufacturing project in the southern part of the state.

New Orleans has only $1.2 billion available to finance $1.5 billion of recovery projects announced in 2009 by former Mayor Ray Nagin, city officials said last week.

Sales and vehicle tax revenue in East Baton Rouge Parish fell 4% in June from last year, continuing a string of skimpy collections since the start of 2010.

BRADENTON, Fla. — Boosted by the popularity of Build America Bonds and refunding opportunities, issuers in the 11 states that comprise the Southeast region sold $34.5 billion of municipal bonds in the first half of 2010, up 7.4% over the same period last year.

DALLAS — Louisiana is taking $403.5 million of gasoline and fuel-tax bonds to market next week as tax-exempt debt, rather than Build America Bonds, in response to investor demand.

DALLAS — The Louisiana Community and Technical College System will continue its capital improvements effort at its campuses across the state with proceeds from the negotiated sale of $68.7 million of revenue bonds on Aug. 23.

DALLAS — Today’s negotiated sale of $104.5 million of general obligation refunding bonds by the Orleans Parish Parishwide School District is seen as an indication that New Orleans is recovering from the devastating storms of 2005.

DALLAS — The Louisiana State Bond Commission on Thursday amended its allocation policy for Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds to provide up to $500 million of the debt for a major industrial project.

DALLAS — The federal ban on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico could be more devastating to the region’s economic recovery than the crude oil that gushed from the BP well blowout for almost three months.

DALLAS — New Orleans is spending millions to purchase a hospital damaged by Hurricane Katrina and renovate the vacant facility to serve residents of the city’s east side.

DALLAS — New Orleans is a great city whose municipal finances are in shambles, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said Thursday in his first state of the city address since taking office in early May.