Washington

WASHINGTON — An American Bar Association section is asking the Treasury Department for guidance on how to comply with stimulus law provisions designed to encourage banks to purchase more tax-exempt bonds from small state and local issuers.

WASHINGTON — The Senate’s top Republican taxwriter has introduced legislation that would block the stripping and selling of tax credits from three kinds of tax-credit bonds. At the same time, Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service attorneys are working to write stripping rules sought by muni market participants who contend they are needed to jump-start the programs.

WASHINGTON — The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority yesterday announced a financing team for $250 million to $600 million of bonds it plans to sell in the spring to help finance the Dulles International Airport Metrorail extension.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department may not modify a planned test of proposed solid-waste bond rules criticized by market participants, but could provide a remediation process for issuers that run afoul of the test, department officials indicated yesterday.

SAN FRANCISCO — Mike McGinn took the oath of office as Seattle’s new mayor Monday, and focused his first executive actions on the city’s expected budget shortfall.

WASHINGTON — For cash-strapped state and local governments that have critical transportation infrastructure needs, but no money to pay for them, the coming year will be bittersweet.

WASHINGTON — A Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board proposal on priority of orders in new-issue retail periods would impose new standards on dealers that are confusing or contradictory and could lead to higher borrowing costs for issuers, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association warned.

WASHINGTON — The economy is improving at the national level but state and local governments face further revenue declines and dismal financial conditions that pose a risk of lowered credit ratings, market participants warned in their outlooks for this year.

SAN FRANCISCO — Citing the recession’s impact on tax revenue, Moody’s Investors Service on New Year’s Eve revised its outlook to negative from stable on Washington’s Aa1 general obligation bond rating.

CHICAGO — As the largest buyer of qualified school construction bonds, Guggenheim Partners LLC has purchased a piece of nearly every QSCB issue since the federal stimulus act launched the new type of tax-credit bond earlier this year.

WASHINGTON — The coming year could be fertile ground for public-private partnerships, especially in the transportation sector, but states and localities probably will have to go without federal help and enter deals cautiously so as not to kill public support for them, market sources say.

WASHINGTON — Next year will bring significant changes in the municipal securities market if Congress passes sweeping financial regulatory reform in what would be the biggest overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression.

WASHINGTON ­— The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday charged a Houston-based broker with engaging in unauthorized and unsuitable trading on behalf of two Florida municipalities, putting them at risk of losing millions of dollars while reaping more than $14 million in commissions.

Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. will complete the buyback of auction-rate securities from retail investors six months early under a settlement in principle reached with securities regulators in Missouri, Indiana, and Colorado announced late Monday.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt bond office plans to move full-speed ahead in 2010, now that it has cleared some administrative hurdles in incorporating large new stimulus programs into its workload and put to work newly trained hires that have nearly doubled the size of the TEB unit.

Legislation passed by Congress last week will allow the Treasury Department to keep open through February its window for state and local government series securities, which municipal issuers purchase for refunding escrows to avoid earning arbitrage.

The amount of private-activity bonds that can be issued by state and local governments nationwide in 2010 will rise to almost $30.857 billion, an increase of 0.8%, according to new population figures released by the Census Bureau and the Internal Revenue Service's formula for state PAB volume caps.

WASHINGTON — The economy will continue to grow next year, municipal bond yields will rise — though not as much as Treasury yields — and the threat of inflation will remain low, according to most economists and market participants.

State and local governments will be able to buy and temporarily hold their tax-exempt bonds, including auction-rate securities, for another year without causing the bonds to be considered reissued for tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service said yesterday.

The top taxwriters in the Senate promised yesterday that legislation that would extend a number of tax provisions slated to expire at the end of the year, including the New York City Liberty Bond program, will be one of the first things they address in 2010.