MuniLand

One of the best muniland research teams, Blackrock, is out with its State of the States and Local Governments report. If you have time to read the 12-page report, you will get a very balanced roadmap of the challenges that municipal governments are facing.

The one area where I felt that the report broke new ground was its emphasis on the uncertainty that state and local fiscal processes face, thanks to the federal government. Here is what the report says (emphasis Blackrock):

Ironically, the greatest threats to state fiscal integrity are not primarily endemic fiscal matters or economic conditions, but rather, the effects of federal policies. First, capping tax exemption is a potential problem for the entire municipal asset class, although offsetting factors would certainly alleviate the impact. For states, as well as local governments, a tax cap could mean higher borrowing costs. Still, as has been the case recently, increased borrowing costs would likely translate into program reductions or cost-shifting to local governments. As stated earlier, we believe passage of the cap will be difficult in the current political environment and is unlikely in 2013.

The threat to cap or eliminate the tax exemption for municipal bonds has been floating around for over two years, and it causes concern for public officials. RBC’s Chris Mauro wrote in a note Wednesday that any change to the muni bond tax exemption would likely go through a traditional legislative process and not be jammed into the continuing resolution. From Mauro’s note:

Yesterday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp announced that the Committee would hold a hearing next Tuesday, March 19, entitled ‘Tax Reform and Tax Provisions Affecting State and Local Governments.’ According to the Committee’s hearing advisory, the focus of the hearing will be the ‘federal provisions that affect state and local governments, and how those provisions should be viewed in the context of comprehensive tax reform.’ In other words, the bulk of the discussion will be centered on the itemized deduction for state and local taxes and the municipal bond interest exemption.

There have been hundreds of articles written about how a number of U.S. states have unfunded pension liabilities. These massive shortfalls have been researched by numerous groups, and although they differ on the size of the shortfalls, they all agree that pension liabilities are creating a troublesome drag on many state budgets. The Pew Center on the States is one of the first groups to dig down and analyze the condition of city pension funds and the promises made for retiree health benefits. Their new study, A Widening Gap in Cities, reports a mixed picture.

Cities such as Milwaukee, Wi. and Washington D.C. are prepared to meet their financial commitments to retirees (see above). Others, such as Chicago and Portland, Or. have seriously neglected their pension funds. Almost universally, cities have failed to pre-fund the commitments they have made for retiree health care. In total, cities have pre-funded only 6 percent of their healthcare promises, leaving a shortfall of $118 billion, according to Pew. In contrast, cities have funded 74 percent of pension liabilities, leaving an unpaid balance of $99 billion. In fact, 22 cities face larger unpaid bills for retiree health care than for pensions (page 16).

There are many approaches to increasing the funding for pension and retiree benefits. Pew discusses some of these approaches (page 22):

California narrowly averted its own fiscal cliff last week when voters approved a state ballot issue – Proposition 30 – that raised income and sales taxes. Income taxes will increase 3% for seven years on those earning over $250,000, and a supplemental 0.25% sales tax increase will take effect four years. Prop 30 is hoped to generate $8.5 billion in annual revenue and cover about half of the state’s deficit. The other half will be made up through budget cuts.

The state continues to have significant fiscal challenges, but it now has the revenue to meet its commitments through the end of the fiscal year 2013 if the economy stays on track. Fund and ETF manager Blackrock sum it up:

Following several years of fiscal stress that showcased dramatic mid-year deficits, California budgetary shortfalls have narrowed and longer-term structural balance may actually prove achievable.

Much as the Simpson-Bowles report aspired to be the foremost guide to reducing the federal deficit, the Volcker-Ravitch report on the state budget crisis that was released yesterday hopes to serve a similar purpose for state government spending. Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman, and Richard Ravitch, who helped New York City work itself out of bankruptcy, led the State Budget Crisis Task Force, the group that produced this report. The task force also included two former U.S. Treasury Secretaries as members. The bottom line of the report is that there is less money to go around and that states should become better managers of the shrinking economic pie:

The United States Constitution leaves to states the responsibility for most domestic governmental functions: states and their localities largely finance and build public infrastructure, educate our children, maintain public safety, and implement the social safety net. State and local governments spend $2.5 trillion annually and employ over 19 million workers – 15 percent of the national total and 6 times as many workers as the federal government…

…States are grappling with unprecedented fiscal crises. Even before the 2008 financial collapse, many states faced long-term structural problems. Many economists believe that in the aftermath of the crisis, the economy will grow sluggishly for years as it works off the excesses of the credit and real estate bubbles and endures slow employment growth. Tax revenues are recovering slowly and remain well below their pre-crisis trends.

For openness in finances, debt management and budget process, Massachusetts is the gold standard among states. The legislature and executive branch have collaboratively embraced a five-year budgeting process and committed to sharing the results with taxpayers and the public. Because of the state’s efforts to reach out to the investing community, I predict that its transparency will lead to lower borrowing costs and more stable funding sources in the future. The state is rated AA+ by credit rating agencies for creditworthiness, but I’ll assign it the highest rating, AAA, for transparency.

Several weeks ago, the state treasurer, Steven Grossman, launched a new Twitter account (@BuyMassBonds) that keeps the public informed about new financial filings and bond offerings. It’s a model of excellence for muniland in terms of keeping municipal bond investors informed through social media. Here is a recent tweet about an upcoming bond issue, the Massachusetts Water Pollution Abatement Trust State Revolving Fund Bonds:

Love clean H2O? Mass Water Trust is selling $230mill in bonds that fund it on Tues/Wed! Learn more at buymassbonds.com #muniland

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie got a lot of media attention this week when he announced that Warren Buffett “should just write [the government] a check and shut up,” on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight. His great one-liner obscured the more profound question he was being asked, which was: Shouldn’t the wealthy pay a higher proportion of taxes? Beliefs about progressive taxation vary widely, but income taxes at every level of government are structured so that the wealthy pay a higher proportion of taxes.

If I had been asking the governor questions, I would have focused on his fetish for cutting income taxes when his state’s cashbox is nearly empty. Or as the rating agency Standard & Poor’s defined the problem:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie released his proposed $32.15 billion budget for fiscal 2013 on Feb. 21. The budget remains structurally unbalanced, is built on what Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services regards as optimistic economic projections to close the budget gap, and increases New Jersey’s (AA-/Stable) reliance on nonrecurring revenues.

Government has expanded tremendously at every level in the United States over the last several decades. Expenditures have risen; constituencies have gained new subsidies; and loads of debt has been taken on. It’s unstable and it’s time to go on a diet.

The Republican party declares that they are the party of fiscal conservatism which has been beating back the profligate Democrat party. Here is the war cry from their 2008 party platform:

The other party wants more government control over people’s lives and earnings; Republicans do not.  The other party wants to continue pork barrel politics; we are disgusted by it, no matter who practices it.  The other party wants to ignore fiscal problems while squandering billions on ineffective programs; we are determined to end that waste.  The entrenched culture of official Washington -– an intrusive tax-and-spend liberalism -– remains a formidable foe, but we will confront and ultimately defeat it.

It’s not clear that Congress is capable of doing its job of managing the nation’s purse strings. Capitol Hill failed at identifying a combination of tax increases and reductions in spending that would have lowered our growing debt burden. Now every constituency that draws funds from the U.S. Treasury is angling to push others away from the trough. A perfect example is the internecine warfare to come over defense cuts. Here is a slick ad against funding for the military’s nuclear arsernal obviously coming from the traditional munitions and equipment makers:

The military players are well versed at battling over the spoils. But it’s the soft side of federal spending, where social support and services are funded, that is less equipped to fight over its share of decreased funding.

The automatic cuts that kick in due to the failure of the supercommittee are aimed at defense, Medicare and Social Security, and other discretionary social programs. The legislation spares cuts for Medicaid payments to states. It’s interesting that this area was protected when other major areas of the budget will have reductions. Medicaid cuts were the reductions that governors and county officials feared most because they consume an increasing amount of state and local budgets. Maybe governors were the real winners of the lobbying game when the Budget Control Act of 2011 was being written.

State tax collections are hot, hot, hot. The taxman rustled up 16 percent more in state income taxes for the second quarter of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010. Where is this phenomenal growth coming from?

Based on the most recent data collected by the Rockefeller Institute, states are raking in about $900 billion a year from their three major tax categories: the sales tax, personal income tax and corporate income taxes. Revenues from these three taxes total about 6.25% of U.S. GDP.

But it’s the personal income tax (PIT) that’s really driving the show. In the state of New York the PIT makes up about 60 percent of total tax revenues. In Oregon the PIT is an astonishing 72 percent of the state’s tax haul. Although the national employment level improved slowly the PIT was up on average 11.4 percent across the country year over year, according to Rockefeller. This contrasts sharply with the 4.6 percent national increase in state sales tax collections, especially given that 21 states cut their PIT tax rate while only 12 states cut their sales tax rates.

When the mainstream press pays attention to muniland, often it’s the most colorful and misinformed voices — think Meredith Whitney – that dominate coverage. So it was great to get some interesting data today on how municipal insiders view the market from the muni team at RBC Capital Markets. They did a survey of 116 municipal market professionals at the recent Bond Buyer’s California Public Finance Conference. Respondents included officials from federal, local and state governments; bankers; and other municipal finance professionals in attendance.

The key findings, shown in the chart above, are that industry participants worry most about the low level of bond issuance, headline risk and federal budget issues. Headline risk and federal budget problems are out of the control of everyone in the municipal space. But low issuance is a puzzler. Certainly these professionals have had their trade reduced as fewer bond issues come to market and as municipalities face harsher credit constraints than they are used to.

Another terrifying data point reported by RBC is the length of time respondents thought that it would take for state and local government revenues to return to pre-crisis levels.