Infra Insight Blog

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other environmental laws can create significant legal risks for the delivery of complex infrastructure projects using alternative procurement strategies. On October 10, 2024, I had the pleasure of collaborating with my Nossaman colleague Rob Thornton, along with guest speaker Tim Suydam from the East County Advanced Water Joint Powers Authority, to discuss … 

Over a thousand US public finance attorneys converged on the City of Chicago last week for the annual National Association of Bond Lawyers Bond Attorneys Workshop.  The conference, the oldest and largest of its kind, featured a number of breakout sessions devoted to a wide range of issues facing the public finance legal community, including the new management contract rules recently issued by the IRS, Revenue Procedure 2016-44 .  As I wrote sometime ago, NABL was a major influence proposing changes to the rules to make them less formulaic and more flexible given the range of business ...

We all know how hard it is to change federal statutes these days—you need an Act of Congress and the President to sign the bill.  Last week, a group of the top public finance lawyers in the US offered an approach relating to the use of tax exempt bonds that wouldn’t require a change in tax statutes but instead could be accomplished through a change in the regulations relating to the so-called private use test.  As the group pointed out in its letter to high ranking US Treasury officials, Congress itself has made it clear that Treasury had the authority to adopt other, more flexible rules.

The ...