Southwest

Oklahoma lawmakers are considering $150 million of bonds to finance repairs and renovations at the state capitol that are expected to cost $140 million.

The Kansas House has adopted a bill that would dedicate revenues from state-owned casinos to support of the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, which faces an $8.3 billion shortfall in promised benefits through 2033.

Both chambers of the Kansas Legislature last week adopted versions of a $14 billion budget for fiscal 2013, but differences in the measures will require negotiations by a conference committee.

An independent audit of the Phoenix suburb of Surprise found $16 million of accounting errors that will erase the city’s meager rainy-day fund and blow a $3 million hole in the fiscal 2012 budget.

Phoenix may end fiscal 2013 with a multimillion dollar surplus in a turnaround after posting the city’s biggest deficit ever in 2010.

DALLAS — Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp. may have to cover debt service payments of $1.2 million for a northern Colorado municipal district that defaulted on $25 million of bonds last December, the district indicated.

DALLAS — Arkansas will study a proposal to turn the Interstate highway from Little Rock to Memphis into a toll road after the General Assembly failed to repeal a sales tax exemption on large trucks and trailers.

DALLAS — Private developers have pledged $80 million to help finance a $250 million entertainment center adjoining the Irving convention center in Texas, but city officials doubt that the pledge is firm enough to earn a credit rating.

DALLAS — El Paso County, Texas, commissioners Monday approved the development of a five-year capital improvement program to identify and finance needed long-term assets.

DALLAS — Chicago-based Mesirow Financial is opening a Houston public finance office that will be headed by former Citigroup Global Markets executive Anderson Bynam, according to the company.