MuniLand

Bankruptcy for Harrisburg finally?

The fiscal troubles plaguing Harrisburg, Pennsylvania have been well telegraphed in muniland. Reuters detailed the problems earlier this month:

Pennsylvania’s state capital, a city of 50,000 about 100 miles west of Philadelphia, has been flirting with bankruptcy as it struggles to pay off $300 million in debt incurred through a financing scheme used to fund a revamp of its trash-burning plant.

In July, the city council rejected a rescue plan put forward by a state-appointed advisor that called on the city to sell the incinerator, renegotiate labor deals, cut jobs, and sell or lease its parking garage.

Bloomberg reports today that Harrisburg is likely to miss a municipal bond payment on September 15. When a bond issuer misses a payment, rating agencies give them 30 days to cure the missed payment; if they are unable to do so, the rater declares them in default. Municipalities are not required to file a Chapter 9 bankruptcy because of this, but generally that is the sequence of events. So if Harrisburg misses the bond payment, it is likely they are headeded to the federal bankruptcy courthouse. Bloomberg reports:

Harrisburg may miss $3.3 million in general-obligation bond payments due Sept. 15, said Robert Philbin, a spokesman for Mayor Linda Thompson, in a phone call today.

New chair for muniland’s regulator

New leadership has been announced at the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, muniland’s primary regulator. Alan Polsky of Dougherty & Co., the incoming MSRB chairman, has spent much of his career working towards increased transparency in the muni secondary market where bonds trade after issuance. This is great news. From the Bond Buyer:

Alan D. Polsky, senior vice president of Minneapolis-based Dougherty & Co. LLC and former chair of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts, will be the next chairman of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board beginning Oct. 1, according to market sources.

Polsky spent a great deal of time trying to improve secondary market disclosure when he chaired the NFMA in 2001. During that year, the NFMA issued several “best practice” disclosure documents recommending how issuers, borrowers, and other market participants could improve disclosure in various sectors of the market. Polsky also was a member of the Muni Council, a group of about 20 muni market group representatives dedicated to improving secondary market disclosure. The group was responsible for the creation of the Central Post Office facility which temporarily served as a one-stop place for issuers to file their disclosure documents.

Thou know’st that all my fortunes are at sea;
Neither have I money nor commodity
To raise a present sum: therefore go forth;
Try what my credit can in Venice do

Antonio, The Merchant of Venice

Sovereign borrowing from powerful banks is centuries old. Venice was the Wall Street of the early Renaissance. The banks located in the watery grandeur there loaned money to faraway kings and traders. Kings didn’t regulate banks but they did often force repayment by raising an army.

Our government reaches far beyond the actions of kings, who merely wanted their money back, and attempts to regulate banks. The government borrows and it oversees. It’s a big effort as the new financial reform law, Dodd-Frank, more strictly regulates the capital adequacy of banks and enforces “fair dealing” and transparency. Reining in the practices of banks and securities firms is hard work but it’s vital to protect our public institutions, taxpayers and investors. Well regulated banks and the rule of law cancels the need for armies to be raised to have a functional financial system.

Regulator wants to require fair dealing

In a far-reaching proposal, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to impose new rules to protect municipalities. These rules would vastly expand the disclosures that dealer underwriters are required to give their municipal clients who issue bonds.

MSRB’s executive director Lynnette Kelly Hotchkiss said in a statement:

Dodd-Frank explicitly requires the MSRB to protect municipal entities. This gives us the ability to establish detailed requirements for underwriters and make important information more readily available to state and local governments that sell bonds.

The rules would require disclosure of “conflicts of interest” to municipalities before they enter into contracts to issue bonds. Specifically the new rules would require banks to:

If you say “Jefferson County” to a professional in muniland, you will likely get a shudder of mild revulsion. This Alabama county is the biggest example of Wall Street aggression towards a public entity since Orange County, California declared bankruptcy in 1994 after buying too many interest-rate derivatives. Dodd-Frank, the financial-reform law that’s been in effect for a year, changed the rules for municipal bonds and derivatives.  But did it change them enough to avert a repeat scenario?

First, a little background: Jefferson County was ordered by the federal EPA to build a sewer system at an estimated cost of $1.2 billion. The construction went over budget and was rife with massive corruption that has ensnared 17 people. The funding of the sewer project was equally corrupt. JP Morgan was under investigation for bribery in 2009 and eventually reached a settlement with the SEC. The Washington Post reported this at the time:

J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to a $722 million settlement with federal regulators over accusations that the bank and two former executives made illegal payments to win municipal bond business from Jefferson County, Ala.

Decades-long infatuation with financing our spending

Sheila Bair, who served as Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for five years through the financial crisis, has completed her term. In a weekend op-ed in the Washington Post, she urges America to rid itself of its addiction to financing consumption and “growth” with debt. This is the core requirement for America to become financially stable again and to return to “real” growth. From Bair’s Washington Post oped:

Now that I’m stepping down, I want to sound the alarm again. The common thread running through all the causes of our economic tumult is a pervasive and persistent insistence on favoring the short term over the long term, impulse over patience. We overvalue the quick return on investment and unduly discount the long-term consequences of that decision-making.

Our decades-long infatuation with financing our spending through ever-growing debt, in the private and public sector alike, is the ultimate manifestation of short-term thinking. And that thinking, particularly in business and in government, is actually getting worse, not better, as we look for solutions to put our economy on a sounder footing.

Agnes Crane, a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews, wrote an interesting column today about ending the municipal-bond tax exemption. This tax exemption, granted at the federal level, makes the interest earned on municipal bonds free from taxation on the local, state and federal level if it’s owned by an investor residing at the place of issuance.

The “triple tax” exemption is baked into the structure of the municipal market. There are several proposals floating about how to modify the muni tax exemption. Agnes Crane, in her column, calls it an “accident of history.” Accident or not, there are 50,000 muni issuers who will actively resist any legislation to change the tax code. It’s hard to imagine any lobbying group with more clout since state and local officials are deeply embedded in the political web of every federal legislator’s district. But politics being what it is, every legislative term brings new possibilities.

But what I really wanted to write about was Agnes’ idea that repealing the muni tax exemption would make the muni bond market more transparent and efficient. The municipal bond market is already miles ahead of other bond markets in transparency. Since the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board made their EMMA system operational, transparency in muniland is an order of magnitude better than other any bond market, including the U.S. Treasury market, which is liquid but not transparent. To see individual trades in the Treasury market you need an expensive Bloomberg or Reuters terminal. But for the muni market all you need is an internet connection to reach EMMA. At EMMA you can easily get all the documents for an issuer and their individual bonds, credit-rating downgrades, annual issuer reports and more.

The ever-shrinking welfare rolls

Stateline has done some very good reporting on the decline of the welfare rolls. Welfare funding was switched to block grants in 1996, and the funding level has remained the same since then. From Stateline:

Welfare is not a big budget item for most states, taking up less than 2 percent of all state spending, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO)…

…When Congress overhauled that system in 1996, it changed welfare from an “entitlement program” guaranteeing coverage to everyone who was eligible and instead created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant that hands out lump-sum payments for welfare. States are essentially given a set amount of money and allowed to use it as they wish. The amount has stayed level since 1996.

California needs to extend tax increases to balance budget

These are hot times in Sacramento.  California’s constitution requires the legislature to send a budget to the governor by June 15.  Time is running out to patch up an agreement, and there is a new incentive for lawmakers to get it done. From Bloomberg:

There are differences this year. In November, voters lowered the threshold to pass a budget to a simple majority from two-thirds. The same measure also stripped lawmakers of salary and per-diem pay for every day they’re late with the spending plan.

Brown has been meeting behind closed doors since March with Republican lawmakers to craft a compromise. The governor’s tax extension, a so-called bridge tax, is the major sticking point, said his spokesman, Gil Duran.

The thing I hear most often about muniland is how murky the market is. It is rather astounding that the municipal market is so little understood given its size and its effects on state and local governments and tax rates. To help shake the market up and create more transparency, I thought it would be helpful to start gathering muniland data sets for people to start playing with. Have at it, friends. Please send over any interesting findings.

Data pools

USA.gov: Statistics at the State and Local Levels

Office of Management and Budget: Historical Tables

Bureau of Economic Analysis: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by State and Metropolitan Area

US Census: Quarterly Summary of State & Local Tax Revenue

US Census: Government Employment & Payroll

Bureau of Labor Statistics: Local Area Unemployment Statistics Map

Bureau of Economic Analysis: Federal Recovery Programs and BEA Statistics

The National Association of State Budget Officers: Spring 2011 Fiscal Survey of States