Industries

The Bay Area Toll Authority this week began public hearings on proposed toll increases on seven state-owned toll bridges in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Moody’s Investors Service Tuesday issued one-notch downgrades to bonds issued by Palomar Pomerado Health, a hospital district in San Diego County.

CHICAGO — The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority will head into the market this fall with the sale of up to $300 million of toll-backed revenue bonds in a deal that will mark the final financing planned for its five-year-old $6 billion capital program.

Pushing principal and interest costs out to future years has weakened the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s balance sheet, with an independent report released yesterday estimating the mass transit agency faces a cumulative structural deficit of $1.19 billion by fiscal 2014.

CHICAGO — Voters in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan were in the mood to say yes Tuesday, approving bond issues for a new hospital in Indianapolis, a capital improvement plan for Detroit Public Schools, and a measure allowing casinos to set up shop in Ohio’s four largest cities.

Kentucky’s appointees to a bi-state authority that will determine how to finance the $4.1 billion Ohio River Bridges Project have been announced by Gov. Steve Beshear and Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson.

CHICAGO — Kansas City, Mo.-based Children’s Mercy Hospital enters the market beginning today with a retail order period on its $180.7 million of new-money and refunding revenue bonds that will introduce fixed-rate bonds to the well-known hospital’s debt portfolio.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced the state would cut 700 positions, Medicaid payments, and school transportation funds to trim $204 million from the $23.7 billion budget for fiscal 2010.

SAN FRANCISCO — Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last week proposed borrowing to speed construction on $20 billion of mass transit projects approved by Los Angeles County voters last year.

WASHINGTON — The Georgia Department of Transportation is poised to launch a public-private partnership initiative it hopes will encompass 17 projects, including a multimodal passenger terminal in Atlanta, connector highways, toll roads and privatized highway rest stops.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick Friday announced five members to serve on the board of the state's new transportation bonding authority, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority will be looking across the pond for ideas on how to improve service and management and how to address its capital needs.

The Texas Department of Transportation is proposing $1.1 billion for the widening of heavily congested sections of Interstate 35 between Austin and Dallas using more than half of the so-called Proposition 12 bonds authorized by lawmakers.

The Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City will begin a retail order period tomorrow for $85 million of bonds secured by a Federal Housing Administration-insured mortgage.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission Thursday evening re-filed its application to the Federal Highway Administration to implement tolls on Interstate 80.

St. Mary's Hospital in Passaic has until Nov. 6 to file a reorganization plan after the health care provider filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early March.

CHICAGO — Minnesota’s largest not-for-profit health care provider, Allina Health System, enters the market next week with the first piece of its nearly $400 million new-money and refunding issue with a trifecta of upgrades in hand — a rarity for the hard-hit sector.

DALLAS — Amid a continuing plunge in revenues, transportation planners in the Phoenix area are cutting nearly $7 billion from a $16 billion freeway program financed through revenue bonds.

The $700 million of bonds to finance a professional basketball arena at the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn could be sold and the proceeds placed into escrow as legal challenges to the project are resolved, an official at the Empire State Development Corp. said yesterday.

The Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Bay Area Toll Authority’s busiest bridge, was expected to reopen today after it was closed earlier in the week when five tons of recently replaced steel supports fell into traffic and damaged cars.