Annual Report 2017

Legislative & Regulatory Summary
From Capitol
Hill to You...
NABL’s Office of Governmental Affairs had an exciting 2017 working on your behalf. We’ve been active on Capitol Hill, met
with regulators, participated in industry coalitions, sent numerous policy letters, and produced educational documents. Together
with NABL’s committee leadership, we produce tangible educational and policy documents, white papers, comment
letters, and more.
Tax reform kept us busy the past few years, but nothing quite compared to the flurry of activity we undertook at the end
of 2017 when Congress passed, in record time, sweeping tax reform legislation. In the end, tax-exempt municipal bonds
were preserved, including private activity bonds (PABs), but we lost tax-exempt advance refunding bonds and the ability to
issue new tax credit or direct pay bonds. We worked tirelessly with our membership, many of you calling your Member of
Congress and asking your issuer clients to do the same. We sent a plethora of communications including emails, letters,
one-pagers, background pieces, and more to Capitol Hill. We talked to the press and we exhausted every avenue we had
to preserve all the tools important to the municipal market.
On the regulatory front, we maintain regular communication with the IRS, Treasury, SEC and MSRB. We monitor regulatory
activity and submit comment letters in response to requests for comment on proposals affecting our membership. In
particular for 2017, one of the industry’s success stories occurred when the IRS withdrew its proposed regulations on the
definition of political subdivisions.
We want to thank you for volunteering your time and expertise over the last year and we look forward to another busy year
ahead. For any questions about NABL’s Governmental Affairs activity, please contact Jessica Giroux at jgiroux@nabl.org.
6