News and Information from Bond Buyer

Top shelf municipal bonds ended weaker on Monday, traders said, as the first of the week’s new issues began to sell.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said it has affirmed its CC rating on various issues of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico's tax-backed debt not currently in default.

DePaul University in Chicago will sell $70 million Tuesday primarily to finance a new music school building.

West Virginia’s legislators ended their session unable to reach a compromise on a fiscal 2017 budget, as revenue estimates tumbled even lower than anticipated.

Sierra Club and other environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit to stop Colorado’s $1.8 billon P3 rebuild of I-70.

Build America Mutual today announced the addition of Scott Sollers, who has departed Stifel to lead BAM’s west region public finance group.

Atlantic City is putting its former airport property up for auction in an effort to address its massive debt burden eight years after a gamble with the land backfired.

The Federal Open Market Committee should raise rates “at one of the coming meetings” as a hike is justified by the economy’s momentum, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Lockhart said Monday.

A Los Angeles utility rate increase aimed at reducing the city’s dependence on coal was deemed a credit positive by Moody’s Investors Service.

Oklahoma City is at risk of losing its triple-A rating after Moody’s Investors Service shifted the outlook to negative.

Top shelf municipal bonds were weaker at mid-session, traders said, as the first of the week’s new issues began to sell. The market is looking at a short week, with trading closed on Friday ahead of the Easter holiday.

Tender rates for the Treasury Department's latest 91-day and 182-day discount bills were lower, as the three-months incurred a 0.300% high rate, down from 0.335% the prior week, and the six-months incurred a 0.440% high rate, off from 0.510% the week before.

Amid rising fiscal pressures and two ratings downgrades, Houston is planning a $600 million bond transaction followed by its annual investor conference.

Ramirez & Co., which introduced the feature in January, says the option redemption enhancement, or ORE, complements a standard 10 year par call by allowing issuers to redeem bonds immediately at a make-whole price to the first call date.

The Treasury Department said Monday it will sell $55 billion of four-week discount bills Tuesday.

California’s drought and the lead contamination crisis in Flint, Mich., helped put water infrastructure high on the agenda at the sixth annual JPMorgan Transportation and Utility Investor Forum in New York.

Indicator Last Report Forecast Actual Existing Home Sales Jan.: 5.47M Feb.: 5.34M Feb.: 5.08M

Following a consultant's scathing report, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer's office has set out to streamline the Bureau of Asset Management.

Existing home sales fell 7.1% to a seasonally adjusted 5.08 million-unit rate in February from an unrevised 0.4% increase to a 5.47 million pace the previous month, the National Association of Realtors announced Monday.

In the March 21st installment of Muni Minute – The Bond Buyer's 60-second video series that examines a top municipal market story that will impact the coming week – we take a look at Puerto Rico and the U.S. Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments in a debt restructuring case that has implications far beyond the island.