News and Information from Bond Buyer

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said it raised its underlying rating on Perth Amboy Board of Education, N.J.'s series 2009 certificates of participation two notches to A from BBB-plus.

Parking meters that print coupons from businesses could start to become the norm for municipalities in the near future.Mastercard and parking services provider Parkeon unveiled a new partnership this fall for a first of kind program that features coupon-printing parking meters offering deals from area merchants. A three-month pilot for this program kicked off in the Village of Rockville Centre, N.Y. on Oct. 7 with MasterCard’s couponing platform being integrated with existing Parkeon terminals. Parkeon Marking Director Sean Renn said there are plans in 2014 for 300 U.S. municipalities and 4,000 cities around the world to incorporate the coupon-printing parking meters including in New York City, Las Vegas, Seattle, Miami, Paris, Milan and Madrid.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said it has lowered its school issuer credit rating on Clinton Central 2009 School Building Corp., Ind.'s (Clinton Central School Corp.) series 2010 ad valorem property tax first mortgage refunding bonds by one notch to A from A-plus.

Tolls from managed traffic lanes can be an effective way to fund expensive highway projects, but investors need to consider revenue volatility.

Illinois hopes to select a private partner to develop its estimated $1.1 billion share of the proposed Illiana toll road by next fall with the goal of closing on a finance package as soon as early 2015, a top state transportation official said Thursday.

Potential volume for next week is $7,909.6 million, up from total sales of $4,862.0 million this week.

Brokers operating in the federally run exchange states remain frustrated with broker functions on the website as the government announces that 26,794 enrollments were completed for health plans between Oct. 1 and Nov. 2 compared with 79,391 for the state-run exchanges, Employee Benefit News reports.

States are no longer waiting for the federal government when it comes to trying to drum up new revenue for transportation infrastructure, said Victor Mendez, administrator, Federal Highway Administration, Friday morning at the Bond Buyer's Transportation Finance/P3 conference here.

Bill de Blasio's budget proposal about a month into his tenure could provide a window to investors anxious to see how New York's new mayor will handle finances.

Dealers unloaded balances left over from the new issues priced earlier in the week Friday morning as half the trading volume came from dealers selling bonds to customers. Puerto Rico trading activity was quiet after the general obligation bonds were put on credit watch negative by Fitch Ratings.

A Nov. 11 announcement that Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves will be building a new stadium in suburban Cobb County and will receive some form of local government funding has brought an age-old debate on whether public dollars for sports facilities makes economic sense for municipalities back to the forefront.

Boeing Co. is threatening to move assembly of the upgraded 777X jet away from the Seattle area, its commercial production hub for almost a century, after union members rejected a labor agreement that froze pensions, Bloomberg news reports. “All options” for a 777X site will be considered, and no new talks are planned before the current contract expires in 2016, Boeing said. Machinists voted 67 percent against an eight-year extension that would have cut benefits while keeping 777X work in Washington state’s Puget Sound region.

The value of wholesale inventories rose 0.4% in September while sales were up 0.6%, according to data released Friday morning by the U.S. Commerce Department.

The Philadelphia Mutual Analyst Society held its inaugural meeting Logan Square with goal of becoming a member of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts.

Action by Congress to eliminate both the tax exemption for municipal bonds and the state and local tax deduction would cause the loss of $71 billion or 0.35% of total gross domestic product and about 417,000 jobs or 0.28% of total employment over the next decade, two government groups said Thursday, The Bond Buyer reports.

Rhode Island municipalities are shifting retirees onto new health-care exchanges, reducing benefits and raising employee co-pays to curb soaring costs, according to Moody's Investors Service, Paul Burton of The Bond Buyer reports. Ocean State municipalities are joining cities such as Chicago in using new and multiple strategies to provide budget relief in this area, the rating company said in a new report.

Industrial production fell 0.1% in October after a revised 0.7% gain the previous month, the Federal Reserve reported Friday.

A Nov. 11 announcement that Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves will be building a new stadium in suburban Cobb County and will receive some form of local government funding has brought an age-old debate on whether public dollars for sports facilities makes economic sense for municipalities back to the forefront. The question of governments such as Cobb County utilizing public money for sports venues was raised on Nov. 6 during a panel called “Stadium Financing: Boon or Bane” at the Bloomberg State & Municipal Conference in New York. Gregory Carey, managing director at Goldman Sachs & Co. who heads the investment banking company’s sports finance and surface transportation finance group, argued that the pros of governments investing in stadiums and arenas for their sports teams outweighs the cons. One example cited by Carey was how the $400 million the state of Minnesota is putting in toward a new stadium for the Minnesota Vikings comprises roughly the payroll tax paid by the National Football League franchise that would be lost should the team have relocated out of the area.

October import prices posted -0.7% in their biggest drop since April, and ex-fuel import prices were flat.