Washington

MIAMI — Legislation authorizing a national infrastructure bank could see renewed momentum this month as the Obama administration begins to prepare its fiscal 2012 budget.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association’s municipal securities division honored Colin MacNaught, the assistant treasurer for debt management in the Massachusetts treasurer’s office, with its 2010 Honor Roll Award at a luncheon Tuesday.

MIAMI — Two senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee, including the panel’s outgoing ranking Republican, are calling for a gradual increase of the gasoline tax by 25 cents over three years.

WASHINGTON — Industry groups are urging the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board to abandon a proposal to alter its Rule G-37 that would require municipal securities dealers to disclose the names of political action committees controlled by bank holding companies or other affiliates.

Robert Dean Pope, a partner at Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Va., was elected president of the American College of Bond Counsel at the group's annual meeting late last month in San Antonio.

Securities and Exchange Commission member Elisse Walter wants Congress to do away with the exemptions for municipal debt in the federal securities laws, but probably would not want the SEC to collect bond documents from issuers prior to issuance, according to bond attorneys familiar with the matter.

The prospects for a comprehensive climate-change bill favored by public power utilities is presumed dead following Tuesday's election because Republicans, who will control the House in January, have opposed such measures, sources said Thursday.

The Internal Revenue Service has completed an audit of $67.6 million of bonds issued by Washington's Vancouver Downtown Redevelopment Authority in 2003 with no change to the bonds' tax-exempt status, the issuer disclosed this week.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday that it is giving tribal governments until the end of 2011 to issue the first $1 billion tranche of tribal economic development bonds, in an effort to save the tribes from having to forfeit any unused allocations at year-end.

Lawmakers will go back to the drawing board for a multi-year transportation bill when Republicans take over leadership of the House in January, but market participants think such a bill may have a chance of squeezing through a divided Congress next year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission unanimously agreed to propose rules for establishing a broad whistleblower program less than a week after an SEC attorney said the agency has obtained numerous queries from muni market participants interested in reporting abuses for awards.

WASHINGTON — Municipal borrowers are much slower than corporations to complete annual audited financial reports, confirming many analysts’ claims that muni issuers’ annual financial disclosures are often stale, a new report shows.

If a state authority issues bonds to pay catastrophe insurance claims, they would not qualify as private-activity bonds because they would be backed with generally applicable taxes and not private payments, the Internal Revenue Service concluded in a recent private-letter ruling.

The Internal Revenue Service is seeking applicants for a tax-exempt bond expert to join its Advisory Committee on Tax-Exempt and Government Entities.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission the first batch of proposals to extend to municipal advisers its rules on fair-dealing, disciplinary actions and administrative requirements.

The National Association of Bond Lawyers last week awarded Linda Schakel, a partner at Ballard Spahr in Washington, its Frederick O. Kiel Distinguished Service Award.

The transportation market seems to be stabilizing, Fitch Ratings analysts said at a conference in New York City last week, before the agency publishes its 2011 outlooks for the sector.

SAN ANTONIO — Build America Bond issuers could potentially go years without subsidy payments under the examination process the Internal Revenue Service is currently considering for them, bond attorneys meeting here warned last week.

SAN ANTONIO — Issuers that want to avoid disclosure mishaps — and possible federal enforcement action — should develop and closely follow policies as well as procedures that lay out who must review and sign off on their disclosure documents, Securities and Exchange Commission officials are stressing.

SAN ANTONIO — Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service officials are trying to figure out how to apply long-standing tax requirements to Build America Bonds that, if interpreted broadly, could have major ramifications for certain BABs held by public pension funds and other governmental entities, possibly leading to their extinguishment.