Southeast

Jacksonville voters agreed to keep a local half-cent sales tax for 30 years to help pay down nearly $3 billion in city pension obligations amid a lawsuit challenging Tuesday’s referendum.

The Florida Legislature’s incoming senate president will sponsor a $2.4 billion environmental program that would be financed with $1.2 billion of state bonds to build reservoirs that would store polluted water.

A Florida panel overseeing Opa-locka’s finances learned that the city is in default on $8.6 million in privately placed bank loans and acceleration of the debt is imminent.

Federal aid will alleviate financial challenges for southern Louisiana parishes affected by this month’s flooding, but the disaster remains a credit negative for the state and local governments, Moody's Investors Service said/

Tennessee said it received a combined interest rate of 2.16% on the recent sale of $366 million of general obligation bonds – the lowest rate in state history.

S&P Global Ratings said it has lowered its general obligation rating on the city of Petersburg, Va. three notches to BB from BBB.

Virginia may take money from budgeted salaries and $378 million from reserves, said Gov. Terry McAuliffe, to tackle a portion of the $1.48 billion budget shortfall projected in fiscal years 2016 to 2018.

Jackson, Miss.’s water and sewer revenue bonds were downgraded four notches by S&P Global Ratings partly due to the lack of initiatives to improve revenues.

South Florida can expect Zika-related travel advisories to hurt tourism and related tax revenues, S&P Global Ratings said. The only question is by how much.

Southeast issuers sold $37.63 billion of municipal bonds in the first half of 2016, a decline of 10.9% from the same period last year, even as new money deals increased.