Municipal Bond Audit Times Show Slight Improvement Since 2015 But Most Still Late to the Table -- The County, State and City Sectors are the Least Timely By Richard A. Ciccarone Municipal bond analysts and investors are accustomed to waiting a lot longer for...
Municipal Bonds, Credit Quality and Disclosure
Re-Assessing the Credit Quality of America’s Cities in 2017 – Part One: Examining Financial Health Against a Backdrop of High Ratings
Are Credit Ratings Reflecting True Risk? More than two years ago, MuniNet published a five-part series on Assessing the Credit Quality of America's Cities, intended to examine and create a framework to analyze the financial health of cities. With this first...
State and Local Government 2015 Audit Times Take a Step Backward
Municipal Government Audit Times Likely Affected by GASB Pension Rules A longstanding complaint among municipal bond analysts and investors is that municipal bond credit disclosures are slow to be reported, and not as timely as they are for other securities in the...
Assessing the Credit Quality of America’s Cities – Part Five: The Bottom Line
Due to its lack of accounting for infrastructure assets and all long-term debt and liabilities, including pensions, general fund analysis has limited utility when analyzing municipal financial health. By Richard A. Ciccarone By incorporating the...
Assessing the Credit Quality of America’s Cities – Part Four: FY 2014 Financial Condition
The most basic sign that a government is living within its means is that it balances its books at the end of the year. Traditionally, most city officials, experts, and observers of state and local government focus primarily on the general fund, usually a government's...
Assessing the Credit Quality of America’s Cities – Part Three: Long-Term Liabilities beyond Pensions
By Richard A. Ciccarone City Financial Challenges Beyond Pensions When Assessing the Credit Quality of America's Cities, pensions aren't the only big long term liability facing America's cities. Add to the list bonded indebtedness, other post-employment benefits...
Assessing the Credit Quality of America’s Cities – Part Two: The Achilles Heel to the Fiscal Condition of Cities – Public Pensions
In the second part of our series on city credit quality, the spotlight shifts to the Achilles heel for many cities: public pensions. by Richard A. Ciccarone Governmental credit quality is a byproduct of both the underlying economy and the cumulative...
Assessing the Credit Quality of America’s Cities – Part One: Focus on Bond Ratings
How close to the fiscal distress edge are America's cities? This article, the first in a series, Assessing the Credit Quality of America's Cities, examines the financial health of cities against a backdrop of high ratings issued by the three major credit rating...
Does Municipal Bond Credit Quality Impact Annual Audit Times?
Increased attention on local government fiscal stress and Chapter 9 bankruptcy filings has heightened concerns over municipal bond credit quality in wider circles than ever before. But while the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires certain issuers of...
Most Municipal Audits Still Slow, Despite Push for Timely Transparency
In the corporate bond market, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires that annual audit reports be submitted within 60 to 90 days of the close of the fiscal year. While the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) has said that it would like to have...