Showing posts with label bonds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bonds. Show all posts

Monday, November 11, 2013

Fitch downgrades Chicago bond ratings

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Fitch Ratings has downgraded the credit worthiness of Chicago's bond debt because of its public pension problems.
Fitch dropped the rating from AA- to A- on $8 billion in general obligation bonds, backed by property taxes.
It also dropped the rating on $497 million in sales tax bonds — paid for by both the city's local sales tax and its share of the state sales tax. And the rating was downgraded on $200 million in commercial paper notes, financed by a general obligation pledge from any available city fund.
Friday's downgrade stems from "the lack of meaningful solutions" to the city's pension situation. City and fire pension programs have no more than 30 percent of the money needed to cover obligations.
The downgrade makes it more expensive to borrow money.

California: After The Transportation Money’s Gone…

In its assessment of California’s budget for the current fiscal year, which began July 1, the Legislative Analyst says this about state highway spending:
“Proposition 1B, a ballot measure approved by voters in November 2006, authorized the issuance of $20 billion in general obligations bonds for state and local transportation improvements…. The budget appropriates $258 million of Proposition 1B funds for various transportation programs. This appropriation level is significantly lower than the appropriations made in recent years because the majority of funds have already been appropriated.” (Emphasis added.)
Caltrans reports that as of August 31, the Legislature has appropriated $14.2 billion of the $15.6 billion in Proposition 1B that were given to Caltrans for dispersal. Nearly $1 billion of the funds left are earmarked for transit projects. Of the $14.2 billion lawmakers have determined how Caltrans will spend, $13.4 billion has been spent.
Of the remaining $4.3 billion in the bond, $2 billion went directly to cities and counties for road repair. Another $1 billion went to the Air Resources Board for pollution reduction efforts like subsidies to purchase cleaner-burning deisel trucks.
The Legislative Analyst’s overview doesn’t say that coupled with the exhaustion of Proposition 1B funds, state gas tax collections are declining.
More Californians are driving – as any commuter will attest – but they’re driving less distances and they’re behind the wheel of increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles.
Gas tax revenue is the primary funding source for California street and highway maintenance and construction. Twenty counties, however, have boosted local sales taxes by one-half cent to pay for local highway and road improvements.
There’s been no increase in the gas tax in 20 years. And the federal Highway Trust Fund, which supplies California and other states with transportation dollars, has been broke since 2008.
An even-numbered election year like 2014 is unlikely to be the time elected officials decide how best to extract more money from their constituents — even if for needed transportation improvements.
Perhaps the Legislative Analyst might begin a 2015 discussion of the problem with a 2014 publication on the state of the state’s transportation funding.
A possible title:
Now What?

Monday, October 1, 2012

DeMint joins national effort to keep feds from bailing out state pension systems


Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is getting hit with a nationwide backlash over his suggestion that the federal government bail out the state employees’ pension program
.
Critics have in the past several days pounced on the suggestion, made last year when Quinn, in announcing the state’s fiscal 2012, said part of Illinois' long-term effort to reduce the estimate $167 billion in under-funded liabilities would be to seek “a federal guarantee of the debt.”

Among those leading the charge is Republican Sen. Jim DeMint. The South Carolina senator has joined the Illinois Policy Institute’s national “No Pension Bailout” campaign -- an effort to stop Congress from attempting to rescue failing state and municipal pension plans.

“Our greatest concern is states will assume they can run their pension systems into bankruptcy and then turn to the federal government for bailout,” DeMint said Thursday.

He also suggested the problem is the result of state legislators trying for decades to win over voters through pension promises based “on accounting methods that would put any business in jail.”

The conservative policy group estimates the total amount of under-funded pension liabilities in states is at least $2.5 trillion, with Illinois leading the nation.

The basic plan floated by Quinn would be for the federal government to rescue the pension program through buying the state’s bonds, which critics say are too financially risky to attract investors.  

Quinn said after announcing the budget that seeking the federal guarantee was only a precaution, then later called the related wording a “drafting error,” according the non-partisan Citizens Against Government Waste, which nevertheless gave the governor its September 2012 “Porker of the Month” award.

Via: Fox News


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Saturday, August 18, 2012

MOODY'S: MORE CALIF. CITIES AT RISK OF BANKRUPTCY


SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- One of the nation's top credit rating agencies said Friday that it expects more municipal bankruptcies and defaults in California, the nation's largest issuer of municipal bonds.

Moody's Investors Service said in a report that the growing fiscal distress in many California cities was putting bondholders at risk.

The service announced that it will undertake a wide-ranging review of municipal finances in the nation's most populous state because of what it sees as a growing threat of insolvency.

The report has both investors and government leaders worried.

Three California cities - Stockton, San Bernardino and Mammoth Lakes - have filed for bankruptcy so far this year. They are not likely to be the last, Moody's said.

Moody's reports that some cities are turning bankruptcy as a new strategy to take on budget deficits and avoid obligations to bondholders, an emerging dynamic that could have ripple effects throughout the investment community.

The municipal bond market has long been characterized by low default rates and relatively stable finances, Moody's said, but that outlook is beginning to change as bankruptcy becomes a tool for cash-strapped cities.

As a result, the agency will reassess the financial position of all cities in California, which issues about 20 percent of the municipal bond volume nationwide, "to reflect the new fiscal realities and the governmental practices."

Via: Associated Press

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