Category - Report

How close to the fiscal distress edge are America's cities? In order to address that question, Merritt Research Services, LLC conducted a comprehensive statistical analysis of important factors and benchmarks that portray the most serious challenges to the fiscal health of America's cities now and in the future. The first article in an installment series entitled, Assessing the Credit Quality of America's Cities, Part One: Focus on Bond Ratings, examines the financial health of cities against a backdrop of high ratings issued by the three major credit rating agencies. Do city bond ratings...

Category: Report, Merritt Data

"Governmental credit quality is a byproduct of both the underlying economy and the cumulative decisions made by officials and citizens over time. The potential for severe strain tends to increase when both the economy and fiscal management break down, which can become even more likely if huge governmental liabilities loom in the backdrop." The second installment of the series, Assessing the Credit Quality of America's Cities, examines The Achilles Heel to the Fiscal Condition of Cities - Public Pensions. Using Merritt data derived from city Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, this...

Category: Report, Merritt Data

Merritt Research Services recently released its 2013 municipal audit timing report, revealing that, on the whole, municipal bond issuers continue to substantially lag their corporate counterparts in completing their annual audited financial statements. As in the past, this year's audit timing study also continued to show a significant variance among municipal bond sectors - and among individual issuers within each sector. While relatively slow audit times among municipal bond issuers has been a longstanding complaint in the municipal bond market, the concern is being echoed in even wider...

Category: Report, Merritt Data

Merritt Research Services has released its 2012 report on the timeliness of municipal audits, showing little change from prior years. This year's study, examined over 38,000 audits over the five-year period from 2007-2011, and over 8,000 audits for fiscal 2011 alone. While most analysts and investors continue to expect a six-month lag between the end of a borrower's fiscal year and the completion of its audit, the study shows a wide variance among sectors - and among individual issuers. The 2012 study revealed a median audit time of 145 days for fiscal year 2011, compared to 146 days for...

Category: Report, Merritt Data