Bonds

Municipals faced rising yields in the secondary market Wednesday while large new-issues priced in the primary market. U.S. Treasuries were weaker again, and equities saw more losses. The Investment Company Institute Wednesday reported large inflows into municipal bond mutual funds for the week ending Jan. 10, with investors adding $2.066 billion to funds following $77

Lake Erie College, a small private school in Ohio, entered into a forbearance agreement with bondholders after the school didn’t meet certain covenants it agreed to as part of a debt sale.  The Painesville, Ohio-based institution, which has just over 700 undergraduate students, is the latest small college to see its financial struggles extend into

As a potential government shutdown looms and tax season is set to open, key provisions friendly to the municipal market tied to low-income housing tax credits appear poised to become law in legislation aimed at avoiding the government stoppage.  The Republican-chaired House Ways and Means Committee and the Democrat-led Senate Finance Committee have preliminary agreements

Republican lawmakers in Arizona pushed back on aspects of Gov. Katie Hobbs’ proposed fiscal 2025 budget, particularly its targeting of rising costs for the state’s universal school voucher program. The spending plan, which was unveiled by the Democratic governor Friday and had its first airing Tuesday before the Republican-controlled legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee, aims to

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt is bringing lawmakers back into a special session on a tax cut after his plan to phase out income taxes failed to pass during a session last fall. The session, set to begin Jan. 29, will take up a 0.25% personal income tax reduction.  “With record-breaking savings and a strong economic

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s 2023 audited financials show the board ended the year with $76.2 million in total assets, an $8 million jump from the $68 million it ended 2022 with, as well as $49 million in total revenue, a $19 million gain from the $30 million it collected the prior year. “The value

Cities and states have joined a chorus of critics urging federal regulators to revise or halt proposed capital requirements for large banks dubbed the Basel III endgame. In a letter filed Tuesday ahead of the Jan. 16 public comment deadline, the Government Finance Officers Association joined with six other municipal market industry groups in laying

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday signed into law a bill permitting municipalities in the state to sell bonds of up to 20 years to finance the purchase of fire engines and other public safety equipment. Previously, they could only sell bonds of up to 10 years to pay for such equipment. The bill

New York City Mayor Eric Adams released a balanced $109.4 billion preliminary budget for fiscal 2025 that keeps a near-record level of reserves. The city faced a $7.1 billion budget gap due to the growing migrant crisis, declining federal COVID-19 stimulus funding, rising expenses from labor contracts and slowing tax revenue growth. The Adams administration implemented a citywide hiring freeze

The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s Center for Municipal Finance is joining forces with Investortools, a fixed income software and data company, to make more data on the municipal finance sector available to academics. It’s the first step in an expansion of the center’s resources as it looks to become the premier

The state of Wisconsin is embarking on a flurry of debt-related activity as the year begins, with a cash defeasance and three refunding deals that may include tenders on the table in the first quarter. The defeasance was made possible by the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget, which included $400 million to pay down outstanding general

The Federal Reserve should be able to “methodically and carefully” lower its interest rate target this year, if inflation continues to moderate, Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller said Tuesday. “When the time is right to begin lowering rates, I believe it can and should be lowered methodically and carefully,” Waller said in a Brookings event.

Munis were slightly weaker to start the holiday-shortened ahead of several large new issues, but the asset class outperformed U.S. Treasuries on the day. Equities saw losses. Muni yields were cut up to four basis points, depending on the scale, while UST yields rose eight to 11 basis points. Munis have “struggled to get out

The New York Blood Center declared an urgent blood emergency last week, underscoring the importance of the organization’s work as it prepares to tap the capital markets to improve its operations. On Wednesday its parent, New York Blood Center Enterprises, plans to price $46 million of tax-exempt municipal bonds to renovate its newly leased campus

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office take on the governor’s proposed budget found Gov. Gavin Newsom’s deficit estimates “optimistic,” though it lowered its own deficit estimates by $10 billion to $58 billion. The main difference between Newsom’s budget for fiscal 2024-25 released last week, which projects a $38 billion deficit, and the LAO’s, is the governor

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a $233 billion fiscal 2025 budget that will make a one-time dip into the state’s reserve to help New York City pay the costs incurred by a rising tide of migrants. “I am proposing that we draw $500 million from state reserves that are intended for one-time emergencies like

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board has filed its amendments to Rule G-14 on customer transaction reporting with the Securities and Exchange Commission, moving to bring the current 15-minute window for reporting trades to the MSRB down to one minute with exceptions for manual trades and smaller firms with limited municipal trading activity. The proposal now

The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority of New York is selling $300 million of tax-exempt green bonds this week backed by the state’s beefed up payroll mobility tax. The TBTA (MTA Bridges and Tunnels) Series 2024A PMT senior lien climate bond certified green bonds will be sold competitively on Thursday at 10:15 a.m., EST. The

Travelers to Florida spent a record $124.9 billion in the state in 2022, up $20 billion from the prior year, according to a study by Visit Florida. The Sunshine State saw 137.4 million people visit in 2022 and 97 cents of each dollar they spent stayed in the state’s economy, according to the 2022 economic

Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. has hired veteran Chicago banker Elizabeth Coolidge as head of public finance. Coolidge comes to Oppenheimer from UBS, where she led the Midwest public finance business. UBS shuttered its muni business in October. Also joining Oppenheimer from UBS are Chicago-based bankers Liberty Ziegahn, managing director, and Madison Maher, director. Oppenheimer has

With a sharp decrease in revenue growth expected in fiscal 2025, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham proposed a $10.5 billion spending plan that she said maintains hefty reserves that help cushion state coffers from volatility in the fossil fuel industry, which generates tax and other revenue.  “Here’s my promise to New Mexicans in future