Northeast

CUNY's journalism grad school is launching a five-year effort to improve state and local fiscal reporting, thanks to a major gift from New York civic leader Richard Ravitch.

Fitch removed the GO rating of West Warwick, R.I., from rating watch negative and assigned a stable outlook while affirming its just-above-junk BBB-minus.

S&P revised the outlook on its AA and AA/A-1-plus ratings on Delaware County Authority college revenue bonds, issued for Haverford College, to negative.

Connecticut and New York's MTA will jointly pursue $349 million in federal resiliency funds to replace the 118-year-old Walk Bridge in Norwalk, Gov. Dannel Malloy said.

The trustees of all five New York City pension funds have voted to ban placement agents across all investment classes, Comptroller Scott Stringer announced.

Philadelphia School District's Ba2 rating was placed on review for a downgrade by Moody's Investors Service, which cited a delay in approving the budget.

Seasonal borrowing for fiscal 2015 will not be necessary, thereby saving New York City $75 million in debt- service costs, Comptroller Scott Stringer said.

Health-care cost savings in contracts between New York City and its municipal labor unions should be recurring and "bend the cost curve" by making the system operate more efficiently, said Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission watchdog organization.

New Jersey police unions have sued state government to force it to make planned payments to the pension systems.

Infrastructure in New York City and around the Northeast is crumbling. How to pay to fix it is a question without easy answers.