Washington

The Senate is expected to vote next week on a resolution by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to disapprove of greenhouse-gas regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act.

Arbitration panels for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority have ordered Citigroup to pay roughly $2.2 million to investors who lost money in one of the bank’s municipal bond arbitrage vehicles.

WASHINGTON — The House on Friday voted 215 to 204 to approve legislation that would extend the Build America Bond program for two years, while gradually reducing the subsidy payments the federal government makes to BAB issuers.

WASHINGTON — The House was poised late Thursday to consider an amendment to the tax-extenders package that would slightly alter the distribution of nearly $1 billion to states for transportation projects.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service plans to ask issuers of negotiated Build America Bond transactions, in a revised “compliance-check questionnaire,” if any investors who bought their bonds in the primary market paid more than the price the bonds were initially offered at.

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday unanimously approved amendments to its Rule 15c2-12 on disclosure that, like the ones proposed in July, will increase the quantity and timeliness of municipal issuers’ continuing disclosures.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service plans to audit one of every two Build America Bond transactions, Steve Chamberlin, a senior manager in the IRS’ tax-exempt bond office, said during a teleconference Tuesday sponsored by the National Association of Bond Lawyers.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, concerned that some Build America Bonds are being sold to investors at prices that are too high, is urging municipal issuers to track the trading of their BABs through the Electronic Municipal Market Access system and to question underwriters about the pricing.

WASHINGTON — As the two chambers of Congress begin to hammer out a single financial regulatory reform bill over the next several weeks, industry groups have mixed views about a provision in the Senate bill that would prohibit banks from engaging in proprietary trading but exclude municipal, Treasury and federal agency securities from the ban.

A group of senators led by Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., were poised late yesterday to introduce legislation that would provide public transit systems across the country with $2 billion of emergency operating funds to help ease the strain on their budgets.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has censured and fined Piper ­Jaffray & Co. $700,000 for failing to retain about 4.3 million e-mails over a six-year period and for not alerting FINRA that it was having problems with its e-mail retention and retrieval.

WASHINGTON — The recovery zone bond program would double in size to $50 billion and Build America Bonds could be used to do current refundings of existing BABs under a new tax and jobs bill released late Thursday evening by leaders of the House and Senate tax-writing committees.

WASHINGTON — As lawmakers in the Senate and House begin to resolve the differences in their separate financial regulatory reform bills this week, market participants are hoping the finished product will exclude several controversial provisions they say could eliminate the municipal derivatives market.

Eleven Northeast states are asking the Federal Railroad Administration to cover $15 million of an $18.8 million study they hope will help improve and expand high-speed rail service in their corridor.

WASHINGTON — Congressional committees have set a July 4 target date for the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill to be signed into law, but lawmakers must clear a few obstacles including their differences over a bond-related provision before the legislation can be finalized.

WASHINGTON — The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board yesterday filed a request with the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow it to post credit ratings directly on the board’s Electronic Municipal Market Access site.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Washington plans to bring its largest-ever bond sale to market Tuesday, when it is scheduled to price $1.1 billion of motor vehicle fuel-tax general obligation bonds.

WASHINGTON — Leaders of the House and Senate tax-writing committees yesterday planned to unveil legislation that would temporarily extend the Build America Bond program as well as several other municipal bond provisions set to expire at the end of the year.

WASHINGTON — A fourth market participant, Mark Zaino, has pleaded guilty to participating in bid-rigging and fraud conspiracies in connection with municipal investment contracts and derivatives, the Justice Department announced yesterday.

Two bond-issuing authorities in Virginia entered into a voluntary closing agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to preserve the status of $74.3 million of bonds after one of them sold its waste-to-energy facilities, which were financed with the bonds, to Wheelabrator Portsmouth Inc.