New York

Even as a budget agreement eludes New York lawmakers, both houses of the Legislature have found common ground in seeking a shift to generally accepted accounting principles budgeting.

New York City and New York State have agreed to each sweep $200 million from the Battery Park City Authority to help close their budget gaps. The agreement also provides funds to provide mortgages for affordable housing projects.

New York State has masked the actual size of its deficits through maneuvers that provide merely temporary budget relief, the state comptroller said in a report yesterday.

New York State and New York City’s borrowing authorities plan to issue up to $6.17 billion of new-money bonds in the second quarter, according to a forward issuance calendar released by the state comptroller’s office last week. Additionally, issuers plan $1.53 billion of refundings and $186 million of conversions.

The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York gave final approval to $791.3 million of bonds at its board meeting yesterday, while also creating a finance committee as required under a public authorities reform measure enacted last year.

About one-third of New York’s 114 industrial development agencies have joined in a lawsuit challenging assessments on their revenue by the state. Attorneys for the New York State Economic Development Council, a trade group representing economic development professionals, filed the action in state Supreme Court in Albany on Friday.

The New York Senate yesterday passed emergency spending bills to keep the government running as it appears inevitable the state will not have a new budget approved in time for the start of the new fiscal year on Thursday.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority liked Build America Bonds so much that the majority of its debt issues over the past 13 months have been the new taxable bonds.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plan to competitively sell $116.8 million of bonds on Wednesday to refund outstanding debt.

Public finance veteran Robert Foran will today be named the new chief financial officer of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Foran, 53, a public finance banker for nearly three decades, has been working with MTA since the 1980s and was a key figure in its $15 billion restructuring that began in 2002.

Moody’s Investors Service Thursday upgraded the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to Aa2 with a stable outlook from Aa3, citing its favorable financial results in tough economic times. The upgrade affects $12.4 billion of outstanding debt.

New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver introduced a bill Wednesday to create a financial review board to oversee the state’s fiscal health and borrow up to $6 billion to close the deficit.

New York’s cash strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a package of service cuts at its board meeting yesterday to help close a $800 million current year deficit.

Practices that increased participation by minority- and women-owned underwriting firms in state-backed bond deals should made law, New York Gov. ­­David ­Paterson said yesterday.

New York City’s budget director Tuesday ordered agency heads to find spending reductions totalling $1.3 billion in anticipation of budget cuts from the state government in Albany.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority goes to market today with a smaller revenue anticipation note deal than last year, reflecting lower revenue than original expected from a bailout package.

New York’s rate of borrowing is unsustainable, according to a report released by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli Friday.

WASHINGTON — A new public power utility may be created in New York for the first time in over 10 years if a measure introduced in the state Legislature is approved. It would serve the far upstate counties of St. Lawrence and Franklin, and kick off with an initial bond deal of around $90 million.

As the trickle of taxable Build America Bonds coming to market turned into a flood last year, issuers’ underwriting-designation policies followed the course charted by the corporate market. In recent months, signs have emerged that the tide is turning and there is no agreement on whether or not that’s a good thing.

While much has been made of a deficit-borrowing proposal in New York, less attention has been paid to how those bonds would force fiscal discipline through bond covenants.