Home      Login

Abstract: 

Since 1992, the Municipal Finance Journal has published edited proceedings from the annual conference of the National Federation of Municipal Analysts. The NFMA 2024 Annual Conference was held April 30-May 3, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The NFMA is an association of eight municipal analyst societies and affiliated individuals around the country. Its mission is to enhance the professional development and analytical contributions of municipal market participants, who examine the credit risks and other attributes of municipal securities. Coming as it did in a historic election year, the conference included panels on election year politics and the media. For this issue, however, we chose four sessions dealing with issues that are likely to be of major significance well beyond election day and into the next administration. The first of our articles brings together five industry leaders, including senior staff from the SEC, GASB, GFOA, and MSRB to discuss current trends and developments, notably the Financial Disclosure Transparency Act, trends in disclosure, pending and potential regulatory rule changes such as the forthcoming GASB standards and MSRB rule G14 on time of trade reporting, and possible legislative changes in light of Congress taking up expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Next we take a close look at two major pieces of federal legislation that will have a very big impact on state and municipal governments as well as regional and private sector partnerships, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Both the IRA and BIL have provisions aimed at meeting long-deferred infrastructure needs and addressing climate change. This panel provides an exceptionally informative review of acts that make available “groundbreaking money” to communities, delivered using “innovative financing tools” that are virtually unprecedented at this scale. Our third panel peers into the future as four diverse experts assess the current technology and prospects for applying Artificial Intelligence in the municipal market—what AI is (and what it isn’t), and where it makes sense for municipal market participants to bring into their analytics and trading operations. Our final group looks at the impact of catastrophic weather and climate events on the property insurance industry, including state-run insurers of last resort, and on the cascading effects of rising premiums and insurer failures on land and property values and the municipal credits that depend on them. All of the panels presented here have been carefully transcribed, edited, and in some cases clarified from the conference audio transcripts. Only remarks reviewed and approved for publication by the panelists are presented. We are pleased to offer these stimulating and informative conversations to our readers.

Keywords: FDTA Rulemaking; GASB Statement 102; MSRB Rule G14; Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Public Sector; Artificial Intelligence in Public Finance; Severe Weather, Property Insurance and Municipal Credit

Affiliations:  1: Univ of Chicago Harris School of Pubic Policy.