Market freeze may slow Oklahoma road, infrastructure repairs
BY BRYAN DEAN
Published: October 20, 2008
Government officials and financial experts are warning that a freeze in the market for municipal bonds could cause major delays nationwide in government projects as basic as road repair and replacing water pipes.
File photo by Chris Landsberger
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When will the market turn around?
Oklahoma County Treasurer Butch Freeman said the county got lucky with its recent bond sale to pay for the purchase of the General Motors plant. Those bonds sold in July.
"I honestly don’t know what we would do if we had $61.5 million in bonds to sell today,” Freeman said. "There’s no way we could have done it.”
Cochran said he doesn’t expect anything to change in the market before the Nov. 4 presidential election, but he hopes things will stabilize by the new year, at the latest.
Diane Pedicord, general counsel for the Oklahoma Municipal League, said city and county governments across the state use bonds to pay for everything from utility improvements and roadwork to police cars and new buildings.
"Obviously, if we can’t sell bonds in the marketplace, there will be a stop to those projects, or certainly a delay,” Pedicord said.
"We are seeing from some of our national counterparts that it’s already hitting in some other states very hard. If you have a major improvement that needs to be done, a delay could be serious.”
general counsel for the Oklahoma Municipal League
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Related Topics:
Public Finance, Politics, Business, Financial Markets, Local Politics, Bond Markets, Fixed Income Securities


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