Last week amendments to the SEC continuing disclosure rules for municipal bonds went into effect. Under the new rules, municipalities that are planning a public offering of municipal bonds must update their continuing disclosure agreements to include covenants to disclose each of the following:

• Incurrence of a financial obligation of the obligated person, if material, or agreement to covenants, events of default, remedies, priority rights, or other similar terms of a financial obligation of the obligated person, any of which affect security holders, if material.
• Default, event of acceleration, termination event, modification of terms, or other similar events under the terms of a financial obligation of the obligated person, any of which reflect financial difficulties.

If you aren’t up to speed yet on the new rules, don’t panic – we’ve been following the issues relating to the implementation of the new rules closely since their announcement in August 2018. For more information, please see our prior commentary, available here and here.

We will continue to monitor industry response to the new rules and will be providing additional updates throughout the year as issuers, underwriters and their professionals adjust to them. Stay tuned!