Washington

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $445 million of industrial development revenue refunding bonds issued by Campbell County, Wyo., in 2007 in connection with a waste-coal power plant now set to be completed in 2013, five years later than originally proposed.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board is seeking public comment on draft interpretive guidance it released yesterday that outlines steps dealers must take to ensure the prices they charge customers to buy and sell municipal securities are fair and reasonable.

BRADENTON, Fla. — The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into an $83.3 million bond deal that Miami-Dade County sold last year on behalf of the county’s financially ailing Public Health Trust.

WASHINGTON — Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Blanche Lincoln and other Democrats contend it’s necessary to impose a fiduciary duty on dealers that act as swap ­counterparties to state and local governments because some of them have misled municipalities into entering swaps they didn’t understand.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Anna Eshoo will soon introduce legislation requiring the Treasury Department to use some of the profits it obtains from the sale of troubled assets under the TARP program to provide relief to local governments that lost money from the September 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse.

WASHINGTON — States are likely to increase debt issuance to plug operating budget shortfalls as federal aid declines and their tax revenues lag the economic recovery, Standard & Poor’s said yesterday in a report.

Louisiana disclosed this week that it has been providing information to the Internal Revenue Service for the last 13 months as part of an ongoing audit of $650 million of general obligation refunding bonds it sold in 2005.

The Obama administration and Senate Democrats yesterday urged senators to come to an agreement on broad financial regulatory reform this week, while the most moderate Republican on the issue argued that negotiations should go on for at least another three or four weeks before a bill is considered on the Senate floor.

WASHINGTON — Real estate investment trusts could be the next frontier for infrastructure financing, according to a report released yesterday by Deloitte LLP, a member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a Swiss association. But legislation is needed to clarify questions of eligibility if public-sector entities want to secure REIT investments, the report said.

WASHINGTON — Swap dealers that pitch to, advise, or enter into swap agreements with states, localities, and public pension funds would have a “fiduciary duty” to put the interests of those entities first, under legislation released Friday afternoon by Senate Agriculture Committee chairman Blanche Lincoln.

Clean water state revolving funds may increasingly be used to purchase land due to the Obama administration’s focus on “green” or alternative infrastructure investments, market participants said Friday as the president launched a major conservation initiative.

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York attorney general reached settlement agreements with investment adviser Quadrangle Group LLC and others for allegedly engaging in pay-to-play practices with state officials and their consultants to obtain investment business from New York’s pension fund.

The new federal health care law will likely mean less revenue for nonprofit hospitals in the long run, Moody’s Investors Service warned in a report out this week.

WASHINGTON — The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has fined three firms a total of $62,500 for municipal and other rule violations, including $32,500 from Lexington Investment Co. for failing to accurately report muni and corporate securities transactions.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Charles Schumer joined current and former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday to urge lawmakers to keep a self-funding provision for the SEC in financial regulatory reform legislation that is inching its way to a vote in the Senate.

WASHINGTON — A lawmaker and a Treasury Department official Thursday pushed for a permanent extension of the Build America Bond program, but acknowledged that the greatest obstacle is finding a way to pay for it.

WASHINGTON — Infrastructure in the U.S., especially for water systems and surface transportation, is desperately in need of investment, the Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young declared this week. Their report criticized governments from the local to federal levels for their sluggish movement toward transportation and infrastructure financing reform.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ron Wyden, who recently caused a stir in the municipal bond market by proposing a tax-reform bill that would eliminate tax-exempt bonds and replace them with tax-credit bonds, said yesterday he is open to discussing possible modifications to the legislation with critics.

A group of state insurance regulators is beginning to provide substitute credit ratings for municipal bonds held by insurance companies and is pitching the ratings to financial advisers and other market participants as a way to improve the marketability of issuers’ bonds to these companies.

Innovative financing tools for transportation projects — including an array of different types of bonds — should be expanded and grouped into a centralized department at the federal level, state and local officials told House panel members yesterday.