Southwest

The New Mexico State Board of Finance has approved an across-the-board 3.2% budget cut for state agencies proposed by Gov. Bill Richardson to help alleviate a $200 million revenue shortfall in fiscal 2011.

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, the Republican candidate for governor of Kansas, has proposed a spending freeze for state government.

Voters in Saline County last week overwhelmingly defeated a proposal for a 1% sales tax to support $55 million of bonds for a new county fair complex.

The Kansas Department of Transportation will begin a $1.7 billion bond financing for the state's new transportation plan with today's negotiated sale of $325 million of taxable Build America Bonds.

DALLAS — The University of Texas System has approved building an $800 million hospital at its UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas that will be financed largely through revenue bonds.

DALLAS — Colorado Springs is preparing to sell $477 million of utility system revenue bonds that will include refunding and new money for a 62-mile water pipeline called the Southern Delivery System.

DALLAS — Denver Public Schools officials are defending a 2008 derivatives deal amid accusations that the district took unnecessary risks that cost millions of dollars and harmed its ability to hire teachers.

DALLAS — Bondholders are trying to find out what happened to a $200,000 debt-service reserve fund discovered missing when a north Texas issuer defaulted on $4 million of bonds used to purchase three retirement facilities.

The Internal Revenue Service has initiated an audit of $21.8 million of tax refunding bonds issued in 2005 by the Uvalde, Tex., Consolidated School District.

DALLAS — Volume of issuance in the Southwest fell 4.9% in the first half of the year, despite support from the Build America Bond program and the return of the Permanent School Fund bond guarantee in Texas.