Bonds

Connecticut is just days away from welcoming the first newborns in the state to benefit from its newly launched baby bond program. At midnight July 1, children born in the state — whose births are covered by Husky, Connecticut’s Medicaid program — will see $3,200 deposited in a trust managed by the State Treasurer’s office,

Democratic Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois has re-upped a long-stalled plan for a national infrastructure bank, saying the bank is needed to complement public infrastructure spending while acknowledging the difficult political realities of getting it through a Republican-led House. “Most bills that get introduced never get passed, so once you understand that, you don’t worry

Chicago Public Schools’ looming fiscal cliff cast a long shadow over the board’s approval Wednesday of a fiscal 2024 budget balanced with the help of the maximum property tax hike allowed under state caps and federal COVID-19 relief. The Chicago Board of Education signed off on the $9.4 billion fiscal 2024 budget package for the fiscal year

S&P Global Ratings on Thursday upgraded Kentucky’s issuer credit rating to A-plus from A, the Bluegrass State’s second upgrade in less than two months. “The upgrade reflects our view of Kentucky’s commitment and execution to strengthen its budgetary flexibility and long-term financial stability, which we expect will continue in the current and future budget cycles,”

San Diego is in the early stages of a public-private project similar in scope to a groundbreaking city center project up the California coast in Long Beach. Long Beach reshaped its downtown through two public-private partnerships that created a 22-acre Civic Center involving a new city hall, port headquarters, library and community park on six

Kroll Bond Rating Agency has hired two public finance veterans for its municipal ratings team, the firm announced Wednesday. Ted Damutz and Lina Santoro joined Kroll in May as directors in the public finance department. “The addition of two talented analysts like Ted and Lina reflects our growing footprint in public finance,” Karen Daly, senior

Texas lawmakers, ordered back to work by Gov. Greg Abbott for a second special session, largely stuck with the same property tax cut proposals they passed during the prior session. With the state projected to end its fiscal 2022-23 biennium on Aug. 31 with a record $32.7 billion budget surplus, Abbott and legislative leaders want

U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain rejected a request by bond parties for her to certify interlocutory appeals of her decisions in the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority bankruptcy. In a Wednesday hearing, Swain said she did not see a reason to reconsider her May decision rejecting certifying an appeal to her decision against a

Municipals were little changed in secondary trading Wednesday while sizable deals from Massachusetts, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority and others that saw ample demand in the primary and municipal bond mutual funds saw more inflows. U.S. Treasuries were firmer and equities closed mixed. Triple-A yield curves were firmer by a basis point in spots

New York is poised to become the first U.S. city to charge drivers to enter an urban center after the city won final federal approval Monday for its congestion pricing plan. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will oversee the program. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said Wednesday that drivers could expect to see tolling by

Local officials in Greenville, South Carolina, are moving forward with plans to establish the city’s first economic development agency. The Greenville City Council voted unanimously this month to shutter existing development efforts managed by an arm of local government in favor of an independent agency being built from scratch by lawmakers hoping to expand private

The Treasury Department teamed up Tuesday with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture to showcase several Inflation Reduction Act programs targeted at rural municipalities and non-profit entities, also highlighting clarifications on direct-pay rules that may incentivize some projects to use taxable municipal bonds for clean energy projects.

More than 160 projects across all states won a chunk of federal funds from a popular and competitive transportation grant program. The projects will “make transportation systems safer, more accessible and more sustainable,” said White House infrastructure senior advisor Mitch Landrieu Tuesday in a press call announcing the grants. “Each one of the projects are

Fitch Ratings said that a decade of deleveraging has officially come to an end for public power utilities in the United States. Leverage metrics for U.S. public power utilities weakened meaningfully, Fitch said in a sector review issued last week. This has effectively reversed the trend of deleveraging that began over 10 years ago, the

Raymond James has expanded its public finance department with three hires for its senior living and debt restructuring groups. The team of David Fields, Rob Whitlock and Naomi O’Dell joins the firm from RBC Capital Markets bringing a combined 80 years of senior living investment banking and debt restructuring experience. “The addition of this specialized

As the Biden administration this week kicks off a national tour promoting its nearly two-year-old infrastructure law, the work to dispatch the funds into state and local coffers has just begun. A recent exchange between Federal Highway Administrator Shailen Bhatt and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W. Va., at a June 14 Senate committee hearing on

Pension funding-related threats to Chicago and Illinois’ fiscal health are on the rise, reports published this week warn. Chicago and Illinois — longtime examples of outliers nationally on the size of their unfunded liabilities and funded ratios — have made progress, with Chicago now making payments more closely aligned with an actuarial calculation and both

The judge in the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority said the bondholders should get about 28.4% of par value of debt and interest outstanding, largely in line with a figure the Oversight Board said was available. U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain on Monday set a bond claim value of about $2.405 billion. This

Municipals are steady to slightly firmer in spots Tuesday as the primary market took the focus with gilt-edged Georgia selling its large general obligation offering in the competitive market to strong demand. U.S. Treasuries were weaker and equities rallied. The two-year muni-to-Treasury ratio Tuesday was at 61%, the three-year at 63%, the five-year at 64%,

Bank of America is seeking to resume its municipal-bond underwriting in Texas after a nearly two-year pause because of a Republican-backed law targeting banks over their gun policies, according to public records obtained by Bloomberg.  Bank of America, the nation’s biggest muni underwriter, hasn’t managed debt sales by Texas or its cities since two GOP

New York is seeking to procure a supercomputer to run artificial intelligence systems and gain a deeper understanding of the technology for more effective regulation.  “When I say the DFS is looking at AI and machine learning, it’s not limited to how we evaluate private sector use of those tools,” said New York Department of