Texas

DALLAS — School districts in Texas are seeing some green shoots after weathering nearly an entire year without the state’s Permanent School Fund backing for their bonds.

DALLAS — Harris County, Tex., today will issue the first of three bond deals worth a combined $550 million.

WASHINGTON — Brazos Student Finance Corp. wants to be the first student loan lender to ask institutional investors to voluntarily tender, at a discount, illiquid auction-rate securities in exchange for new floating-rate notes, about a year after a much larger and more complex offer failed.

DALLAS — Amid an ambitious expansion plan, the University of North Texas Board of Regents is preparing to issue $180 million of system revenue bonds for its Dallas campus and for a new football stadium at the main campus in Denton.

DALLAS — By a three-vote margin, the citizens of Andrews County, Tex., voted last May to finance a low-level radioactive waste dump with a $75 million bond issue, the first in the county’s history.

DALLAS — Texas will pump about $125 million of highly rated general obligation bonds into the market next week as the state pools funds for water development loans.

DALLAS — As the nation’s port business drifts at low tide, Corpus Christi, Tex., is preparing for better days with a $250 million mixed-use container terminal financed through a public-private partnership.

DALLAS — Local governments in Texas are keeping their belts tight as sales tax revenue continues to fall sharply.

DALLAS — A decade after Austin-Bergstrom International Airport opened for business, it is keeping the light on for a super low-fare carrier that might want to use its no-frills South Terminal.

DALLAS — Voters across the Southwest approved nearly $4 billion of bond proposals in lightly attended off-year elections Tuesday.

DALLAS — Texas voters today will decide whether to issue $2 billion of bonds for veterans housing, partner with the Veterans Administration on a South Texas hospital, and redirect a $450 million education fund toward the creation of more top-tier universities.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board on Thursday approved a proposal by the University of North Texas System for a 28,000-seat football stadium that will be financed in part with $38 million of student fee revenue bonds.

The Texas Department of Transportation is proposing $1.1 billion for the widening of heavily congested sections of Interstate 35 between Austin and Dallas using more than half of the so-called Proposition 12 bonds authorized by lawmakers.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $61.3 million of auction-rate securities issued in 2005 by the Coastal Bend Health Facilities Development Corp. of Corpus Christi, Tex.

DALLAS — If Texas voters approve Proposition 4 next week, the state would invest $450 million toward adding seven Tier 1 universities in hopes of closing an educational gap with other large states.

DALLAS — A fast-growing school district in the northern suburbs of Dallas is taking its case for general obligation bonds to voters on Nov. 3 for the third time in a year.

DALLAS — Houston-based St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System is preparing a $385 million revenue bond refunding deal through the Harris County Cultural Education Facilities Finance Corp.

WASHINGTON — Federal lawmakers from Texas are pushing for the Treasury Department to change tax rules that are forcing the state’s school districts to forego, or pay more for, the bond financing of infrastructure projects because they cannot access the Texas Permanent School Fund’s bond guarantee program.

DALLAS — With tolling options closed, the Texas Transportation Commission is considering funding sources for a $2.2 billion expansion of heavily traveled Interstate 35 to six lanes from San Antonio to the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

DALLAS — The Travis County Housing Authority in Austin is in the process of revamping its accounting procedures after federal auditors reported that the agency’s books could not be audited and that $2.5 million had been misapplied to non-federal programs.