McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC paralegal Terry Snyder was elected President of Ladies First – The Mid-Atlantic Women’s Public Finance Forum and will serve in this role through 2020.
Ladies First is a professional association that provides educational opportunities, as well as mentoring and networking opportunities to enhance and expand the role of women in…
The IRS recently announced that it will be issuing guidance in the near future on the elimination of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). The guidance, long-awaited by the municipal finance industry, is expected to address under what circumstances a reissuance will occur when a floating rate bond using LIBOR as the reference rate is modified to another reference rate.…
Continue Reading IRS Finalizing Guidance on Tax Impact of LIBOR Phaseout
Now that most of the dust has settled on the 2019/2020 budget, municipal and Authority water, wastewater and storm water system service providers should note that the Fiscal Code provides a funding opportunity.…
Continue Reading Fiscal Code Provides Potential Funding for Water, Sewer and Storm Water Projects
On May 7, 2019, the City of Baltimore discovered that its integral systems were the subject of a ransomware attack, breaching the City’s phone systems, emails, documents and critical operational databases, affecting roughly 10,000 City computers. The City notified the F.B.I. and took offline as many other systems as possible to prevent the spread of the cyberattack, but not before the malicious software locked and encrypted many of the City’s systems. The hackers responsible for the attack demanded thirteen bitcoins (approximately $100,000), as ransom, to release the City’s inaccessible databases and operational tools. In a move intended to disincentive future attacks, Baltimore rejected hackers’ demands and did not pay the ransom.…
Continue Reading Ransomware Attacks Targeting Cities and Municipalities
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf recently signed into law Act 4 of 2019 (HB 264), which amends section 12 of the Municipality Authorities Act, 53 Pa.C.S. 5612, to establish minimum standards for an Authority’s financial and operating procedures. Act 4 received unanimous support in both the House and the Senate.
Act 4 makes a number of…
A group of elected officials in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate have reintroduced a series of bills making significant changes to the process by which municipalities in Pennsylvania incur debt. The introduction of these bills has become a biennial occurrence; since the 2013-2014 legislative session, similar bills have been introduced, calling for such changes. None of the prior proposals have been enacted into law.
The bills that have been introduced in the 2019-2020 legislative session primarily consist of two packages – one in the House and one in the Senate. The package of reform proposals in the House can be found at House Bills 882-884. The package of reform proposals in the Senate can be found at Senate Bills 204-210. One proposal was introduced as House Bill 320, and is a standalone measure addressing interest rate swaps. We’ve included in this post links to each bill, so that you can monitor the status of the bills.…
Continue Reading Slate of Municipal Debt Reform Proposals Reintroduced in PA House, Senate
The MSRB is finalizing some user-friendly enhancements to the Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA) website, the website designated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission as the official source for municipal securities data and disclosure documents. The enhancements follow new continuing disclosure rules that will increase the volume of information required to be disclosed on EMMA. The MSRB expects that the enhancements will make it easier for issuers and obligated persons to submit information, and for the public to access it. The enhancements should roll out for public use this summer.…
Continue Reading EMMA Gets a Makeover: Enhancements Coming in Summer 2019
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:
…
The Internal Revenue Service celebrated New Year’s Eve this year by issuing two rule-making notices of interest to the tax-exempt bond community, on the topics of public approval of private activity bonds and reissuance.
The first notice contains final regulations on the public approval requirement of section 147(f) of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C.…
As we prepare to say goodbye to 2018 and welcome a new year, we thought we’d take a moment and revisit a few of our favorite stories from the last twelve months that we’ve followed on the McNees Public Sector Blog.…
Continue Reading A Look Back at 2018
