Bonds

Sales at New Jersey’s municipal bond-financed American Dream mega mall soared in the first quarter as consumers demonstrated continued demand following the busy holiday shopping period.  Gross sales for the mall’s retail, attractions, entertainment, dining and parking rose 27% to just under $148 million in the first quarter compared to the same period a year

The municipal finance market is rallying behind legislation that Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., introduced this week that hits all the market’s top priorities: restoring tax-exempt advance refunding, creating a new taxable direct-pay tool and lifting the cap for small borrower bank-qualified bonds. Sewell, a former public finance attorney and senior member of the House Committee

After nearly a year of negotiations and four short-term extensions, and a week after the Senate passed it, the House Wednesday approved a bipartisan $105 billion Federal Aviation Administration bill, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk two days before the agency’s spending runs out. The 387-26 vote passed a bill that features a solid bump

Wood-pellet manufacturer Enviva Inc.’s bankruptcy has pushed $353 million of municipal bonds along with a wider $2.6 billion pot of debt into a Chapter 11 corporate reorganization. The municipal bonds are the $252 million in outstanding Series 2022 Industrial Development Authority of Sumter County Exempt Facilities revenue bonds in Alabama and $101 million in outstanding

Fitch Ratings last week upgraded Milwaukee’s issuer default rating and general obligation rating to A-plus from BBB-plus. The outlook is stable.  Milwaukee benefited from Fitch’s new rating criteria, rolled out last month, which incorporate most of the credit factors that Fitch has considered historically but include additional analytical factors and now assign specific weightings to

Municipals were slightly firmer Wednesday as the New York City Transitional Finance Authority came to market with a $1.8 billion deal with small bumps from its retail offering and inflows into exchange-traded funds topped $1 billion. U.S. Treasuries and equities rallied following the consumer price index report that came in softer than expected. April’s CPI

How much the federal government can contribute to rebuilding the originally bond-financed Francis Scott Key Bridge is now a concern for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.  “Hours after the collapse, President Biden announced his intention for the federal government to pay for the entire cost of reconstructing the Key Bridge,” said Committee Chair

Local leaders are already looking toward reauthorization of federal infrastructure funds as the Biden administration’s infrastructure law nears its halfway point with a focus on preserving the law’s substantial direct funding to cities, counties and regional governments as well as strengthening assistance to smaller entities that have faced challenges snagging some of the grant funding.

John Sheldon, a veteran broker-dealer, was appointed deputy treasurer of public finance by California Treasurer Fiona Ma. Ma announced Tuesday Sheldon had been named to replace Juan Fernandez, who retired in late February. Sheldon, who has more than 30 years of experience, was sworn in on Tuesday. “This position requires an experienced financial practitioner with

Brightline West is providing a road map for rail projects looking for federal funding as their planned route from Los Angeles to Las Vegas includes union labor, train sets built in the U.S. and teaming up with Uncle Sam to get the financing done. “Governments have a superpower as it relates to expediting these projects,”

Houston Mayor John Whitmire proposed a fiscal 2025 budget Tuesday that uses remaining federal pandemic funding to fill a $160 million structural gap and accommodate higher spending, while he puts “everything on the table” to come up with a recurring solution heading into fiscal 2026. Whitmire, who took office in January, said the $6.7 billion

The National Football League’s Cleveland Browns recently met with state legislators in Ohio to discuss plans including a new $2.4 billion domed stadium in Brook Park — about 14 miles southwest of Cleveland — for which the team wants public funding. “We know that there are two proposals being floated, but they certainly have not

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors. As some state and local governments and their agencies look to redeem or refund their Build America Bonds (BABs), some questions have come up regarding the legality of doing so, especially as current interest rates may likely lead to an increase in

The Turnpike Authority of Kentucky approved the sale of $128 million of revenue bonds, with the proceeds to be used to refund the authority’s Series 2010B Build America Bonds. TAK Treasurer Steve Starkweather said he expects the authority to price the bonds June 6 with an all-in true interest cost of 3.216%. They are to

Paul Creedon, Citi’s former co-head of municipal banking and public finance, has joined Janney Montgomery Scott as head of national infrastructure to help expand the firm’s municipal and public finance team. Creedon has more than three decades of experience, “successfully directing business strategy for top-ranked public finance banking teams and serving the financing needs of

Municipals were little changed in secondary trading Tuesday as a large new-issue calendar took focus in the primary, led by a $1.5 billion retail order from the New York City Transitional Finance Authority. U.S. Treasuries were firmer across the curve and equities were up near the close. The two-year muni-to-Treasury ratio Tuesday was at 64%,

Transcription: Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record. Michael Scarchilli (00:05): Hi everyone and welcome to the Bond Buyer Podcast, your essential resource for insights into everything municipal finance. I’m Mike Scarchilli, editor in chief of the

With passenger volume expected to keep growing, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is aiming to build its first new terminal in decades, while spending billions of dollars in the interim to address aging infrastructure.  Airport officials told the city council last week the terminal would be built on the site of two previously demolished terminals

Major infrastructure funding packages passed by Congress have significantly narrowed the country’s chronic infrastructure funding gap, but new challenges like extreme weather and the uncertainty of future federal spending levels means the gap could widen again over the next two decades, bringing with it significant drags on the U.S. economy. That is the message from

Despite recent spread-widening and underperformance by the tobacco bond sector due to falling cigarette sales and tobacco usage, it has been supported by solid demand for high-yield paper and strong technicals behind it. Good demand for tobacco bonds accounts for the small spread widening and underperformance, said John Miller, head and chief investment officer of

The Colorado Legislature ended its session last week after passing a fiscal 2025 budget, school funding changes, a property tax cut, and measures aimed at pushing multi-billion-dollar passenger rail projects and a bond-financed purchase of an historic hotel forward.  State officials celebrated a legislative session Senate President Steve Fenberg called “nothing short of transformational” at