Washington

The Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of Municipal Securities hired two new attorney fellows recently, the chief of that office confirmed this week.

Agents representing Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s office raided the Harrisburg home of its former mayor, Stephen Reed.

Municipal issuers spent $2,000 to $18,000 to do continuing disclosure reviews under the Securities and Exchange Commission's Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation Initiative and the vast majority of them felt they were forced to do them, the Government Finance Officers Association said during a spirited panel discussion here Tuesday.

A number of market participants want a sophisticated issuer exemption to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal advisor registration rule, but a leading official in the SEC’s Office of Municipal Securities said Monday that the rule is too new for that.

Dealer groups and banks remain highly concerned that the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's proposed core municipal advisor rule could limit the services they offer, while non-dealer advisors told the Securities and Exchange Commission that the proposal needs more clarification in several ways.

The Government Finance Officers Association is trying to galvanize public officials to pressure federal banking regulators into more permissive rules classifying municipal securities as high-quality liquid assets under the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) rule adopted last year.

Municipal issuers need to be prepared to fight against Securities and Exchange Commission efforts to directly regulate them, members of the Government Finance Officers Associations' Committee on Governmental Debt Management said Saturday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission should not approve the outline for the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's Municipal Advisory Representative Qualification Examination because it takes an inappropriate "one-size-fits-all" approach, the Investment Company Institute told the commission in a comment letter.

Sixteen municipal market groups are urging House members to co-sponsor a bill that would treat all investment grade and actively traded municipal securities as high-quality liquid assets under a bank liquidity rule.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s proposal to collect additional post-trade data for EMMA, the MSRB announced late Tuesday.