Midwest

The Chicago City Council votes as soon as Wednesday on more than $2.6 billion of bonding after a day-long finance hearing in which aldermen forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration to downsize a GO bond request.

Weaker results in the current fiscal year prompted one rating agency to shift its outlook on Michigan-based Trinity Health Credit Group's high-grade rating to negative ahead of its sale of $568 million of new-money and refunding bonds.

The lack of supply to meet demand – especially for yield – is seen as benefitting Chicago, Chicago Public Schools, and Illinois when all three fiscally distressed credits land in the bond market during the next two weeks.

Standard & Poor’s bumped Memorial Group Inc. out of junk territory thanks to support provided by the stronger rated BJC Healthcare system.

Illinois’ not-for-profit hospitals are facing new uncertainty over their local tax exemptions and charity care obligations after an appellate court voided a 2012 law governing their community benefit requirements.

Nebraska would accelerate work on an unfinished expressway with funding from a proposed transportation infrastructure bank.

Illinois political dysfunction that’s driven a more than six-month-old fiscal 2016 budget stalemate won’t alone drive a downgrade, Standard & Poor’s says in a new report.

Chicago will offer its long planned $500 million general obligation refunding next week with plans for another $3.6 billion of new money, refunding, and restructuring GO and revenue-backed borrowing in its 2016 pipeline.

Illinois’ first bond offering statement in 20 months lays out a trove of warnings about the state’s stressed fiscal condition, from failed pension reforms and budget gridlock to its weakened credit and negative swap valuations.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner’s task force on local government consolidation and unfunded mandates offered 27 recommendations to streamline government operations.