Washington

WASHINGTON — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels made the rounds in the nation’s capitol Thursday, urging lawmakers to pass a transportation bill friendly to public-private partnerships and telling reporters that he fears there might not be a bill at all.

Between 3% and 8% of federal money earmarked for the highway system since 2010 has gone to waste on inactive projects, according to a new GAO Report, which cites lax federal oversight and recommends a narrower role for the FHA.

Identical bills proposed by House and Senate lawmakers to provide rules of the road for taxing digital goods and services would immediately and significantly reduce state and local tax collections, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warns in a report.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has launched an online guide designed to help retail investors better understand the municipal bond market and the roles and responsibilities of muni bond brokers.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $3.19 billion of gas project revenue bonds that the Tennessee Energy Acquisition Corp. issued in 2006.

The increasing popularity of electronic brokerage has led the MSRB to examine whether retail investors who trade municipal securities through broker-dealers' online systems have adequate protection under its rules.

Criteria for the expanded definition of sophisticated municipal market professional (SMMP), which takes effect July 9.

Broker-dealers will not have to make the same disclosures to wealthier, more sophisticated individual investors that they do to other investors under a revised MSRB interpretative notice approved by the SEC.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has published a tax law compliance guide for issuers in conduit bond transactions.

Federal lawmakers and their staffs are wrong to think that tax-credit bonds could cost-effectively replace tax-exempt municipal bonds as a source of financing for state and local governments' projects, Citi said in a recent report.

A risk management officer of a New Jersey authority and a tax partner at a law firm in Chicago have been tapped to join the three-member tax-exempt bond group of an Internal Revenue Service advisory committee. Katherine A. Newell, director of risk management and ethics liaison officer at the New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority in Princeton, N.J., and Lorraine Tyson, a tax partner in the public finance practice group at Pugh, Jones & Johnson PC in Chicago, will take their seats on the panel after its June 6 meeting here.

Backers of alternatives to traditional highway financing are ramping up efforts to win over policy makers and a skeptical public, as the groundswell against tolling remains strong and lawmakers labor to save the rapidly diminishing Highway Trust Fund.

WASHINGTON — Lawrence Sandor has been named the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's deputy general counsel for regulatory support.

Four groups representing localities are forming an advisory council as part of the Streamlined Sales Tax agreement to focus on local tax issues and to push for Congress to approve online sales-tax legislation.

WASHINGTON — States slowed their borrowing dramatically, with a growth of only 2.5% in 2011, despite low interest rates, according to a new Moody’s Investors Service report.

WASHINGTON — Donald Borut announced Tuesday that he will retire as executive director of the National League of Cities at the end of 2012, after 22 years.

WASHINGTON — Two top experts and staff officials at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials plan to retire on Feb. 1 next year.

WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is urging lawmakers to include in a final highway bill temporary relief from the alternative minimum tax for private-activity bonds and provisions that keep TIFIA loans from being subordinated to other debt in municipal bankruptcies.

Natwar Gandhi has a unique job in a city unlike any other, but the District of Columbia's CFO strives to use the advantages of his one-of-a-kind office to offset the many challenges he readily admitted his city faces.

A tax-exempt advisory group to the Internal Revenue Service plans to release a report on June 6 about recent changes the agency has made to forms that bond issuers and nonprofits must file with it.