Washington

Fenn Putman, former chair of the Public Securities Association and vice chair of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, passed away on Sunday, June 8, at age 80.

Ernesto “Ernie” Lanza is leaving his position as deputy executive director at the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board to join the Washington office of Greenberg Traurig.

House GOP leaders push ahead with a plan to fund highway projects for a year with savings realized by limited Saturday mail deliveries.

City attorneys should be aware of possible conflicts between the issuer they represent and its employees, financial advisors and counsel about whether to self-report that bond documents failed to disclose violations of a continuing disclosure agreement, regulators and lawyers warned Thursday.

Two U.S. senators have introduced a bill that give more rights to municipal employees in Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings, but experts warn the measure could lead to more litigation and raise Constitutional issues.

Carla A. Young, a former shareholder at Greenberg Traurig and Internal Revenue Service official, has joined Nixon Peabody as a tax partner in its public finance group.

Two more Ohio school districts have disclosed they are authorized to redeem BABs they issued in 2010 because of reduced subsidy payments due to sequestration.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board plans to soon unveil a new price discovery tool on EMMA that will allow investors to compare the prices and yields of municipal securities that share the same characteristics.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday filed securities fraud charges against a nonprofit charter school operator in Chicago for misleading investors of $37.5 million of bonds about conflicts of interest that could have jeopardized the ability to pay debt service.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., will propose a 12 cent per gallon increase in the federal gasoline tax to support highway and transit projects.

A panel that advises the Internal Revenue Service will present reports next month, including one from the committee's tax-exempt bonds team on the treatment of management contracts.

Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association president and chief executive officer Kenneth Bentsen criticized recent efforts by the Securities and Exchange Commission to further regulate the muni market, telling issuer officials on Tuesday that a new rule and initiative could undermine productive relationships between municipalities and underwriters.

Airport infrastructure public-private partnerships are often stymied by a web of competing local interests, aviation advocates told a House P3 panel.

Despite the warm spring weather, industry concerns over the SEC's Municipal Continuing Disclosure Cooperative Initiative have begun to snowball.

Sharon Zackula has joined the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board as an associate general counsel.

State and local officials are worried that small issuers of municipal bonds will be disproportionately exposed to the risk of enforcement action under the Securities and Exchange Commission's continuing self-reporting program on disclosure failures, and plan to pressure the commission to extend the initiative's deadline beyond its current Sept. 10 date and offer more guidance.

Kent Hiteshew, the director of the Treasury Department's new office of state and local finance, described the office's initial areas of focus and asked municipal government finance officials to provide input about how the office could be helpful.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association will help large issuers of municipal bonds pressure the Securities and Exchange Commission for a sophisticated issuer exemption from its municipal advisor rule, and will also request another delay in the rule's effective date if more guidance is not available soon.

The Government Finance Officers Association has released model language for issuer officials to use when interracting with broker-dealers and other entities under the municipal advisor rule.

The District of Columbia will become the first jurisdiction in the United States to implement a social impact bond to finance services aimed at reducing teen pregnancy and increasing high schoolers' educational attainment, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray's budget and finance office said.