Midwest

CHICAGO — The Regional Transportation Authority of Illinois board yesterday approved a $140 million taxable working cash-flow note issue that will help the agency keep Chicago-area buses and trains in service as it awaits its overdue state aid.

CHICAGO — Iowa, an earlier user of Build America Bonds, won't draw on that program again for two upcoming sales because the savings are not worth the worries over heightened scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service, Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald said yesterday.

CHICAGO — In its first meeting after the consolidation of 10 state bond-issuing authorities into a single agency, the newly formed Michigan Finance Authority board approved a pair of transactions and acted on administrative matters.

CHICAGO — Illinois’ debt manager returns tomorrow from an overseas tour where he sought to whet the appetites of European and Asian institutional buyers for his beleaguered state’s paper ahead of a $900 million taxable Build America Bond sale.

CHICAGO — Whiting, Ind., is selling $18.3 million of tax increment revenue bonds Thursday to finance a development on the city’s Lake Michigan lakefront.

CHICAGO — The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a review of a failed investment by five southeastern Wisconsin school districts in collateralized debt obligations that were intended to establish trusts to pay the districts’ non-pension retiree health care benefits.

CHICAGO — The University of Cincinnati Thursday will price $128 million of debt that includes a mix of new-money and refunding tax-exempt bonds, taxable Build America Bonds, and notes. Roughly half of the long-term borrowing is earmarked for the renovation of the university’s Medical Science Building.

CHICAGO — Indianapolis and the Indiana Pacers are expected to sign a short-term lease to keep the team in town as talks continue over whether the city will take over paying $18 million in annual operating costs at the Conseco Fieldhouse, which the team has previously paid.

CHICAGO — The Oakland County Economic Development Corp. will price $28 million of recovery zone facility bonds — most of which will be privately placed — to finance a new film studio in an abandoned General Motors Corp. plant in Pontiac, Mich.

CHICAGO — Prosecutors in the federal corruption trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich sought in testimony this week to link a loan to businessman Joseph Aramanda from consultant Robert Kjellander to an alleged scheme by Blagojevich and three associates to personally profit from the state’s $10 billion pension bond sale.