By Richard A. Ciccarone, President of Merritt Research Services, an Investortools, Inc. Company Every year since 2007, Merritt Research Services1 (Merritt Research) reports the time it takes for municipal bond borrowers to complete their annual financial audits. The...
Richard Ciccarone
Tollroads Show Strongest Growth in Total Revenue Growth
Tollroads Edge Hospitals for the Municipal Bond Credit Sector Revenue Honors Tollroad and Hospital Sectors easily led all other municipal bond credit sectors when it came to annual total revenue growth over the recent five year period spanning 2012 through 2017....
Municipal Finance: The Financial Condition of U.S. States
General Fund Balance for Majority of U.S. States Fiscal Year 2016 Continue on a Positive Path by Richard Ciccarone As measured on a median basis, state total general fund balances in relation to expenditures recorded their best end of year operating position since the...
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...
Housing Values Reverse Course – Cities Mix of Winners and Losers
Richard Ciccarone presents data and notes on trends in housing values Owner occupied housing values benefited from an uptick in 2015, bucking the trend of four years of successive declines nationally. By no means ubiquitous, some...
Alaska Pension Obligation Bonds – $2.4 Billion | MuniNet Featured Bond
Featured Municipal Bond in the Market, Week of 10/10/2016: Alaska Pension Obligation Bonds - $2.4 Billion This week’s featured bond comes from the State of Alaska. The Alaska Pension Obligation Bond Corporation is scheduled to issue $2.4 billion in pension obligation...
This May Be One “Discount” That’s not So Appealing
More on 2015 City Pension Funds: This is Part II in Richard Ciccarone's look at city pension funds in 2015 and the future landscape. Part I can be found here. Earlier this month, MuniNet reported that most city pension plan funding ratios took a positive bounce based...
City Pension Funding Ratios Take a Bounce Back in 2015 for Most Cities
A Few Quick Points About City Pension Funding... by Richard A Ciccarone Based on audited results from 701 cities received to date by Merritt Research Services, City single/agent pension funding ratios showed a marked improvement in FY 2015 compared to the...
Featured Conference: Brookings/Brandeis/Washington University 5th Annual Municipal Finance Conference
On July 12, 2016, the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings Institution, the Rosenberg Institute of Global Finance at Brandeis International Business School, and Olin Business School at Washington University St. Louis are teaming together to...
Change Doesn’t Come Easy for Municipal Bond Audit Timing
by Richard A. Ciccarone Despite serious jawboning by market participants and a spotlight on a spate of municipal credit problems since 2010, Merritt Research Services' latest and most expansive study to date, using financial reports from 2014, continues to show that...