Ice Miller partners Jarrod Loadholt and Kip Wahlers were quoted in The Bond Buyer article, "Local, state officials need to make the case in person for preserving PABs."

The article included: 

Now is the time for officials from cities, states and other municipal bond-issuing entities to head to Washington, D.C. and make their case for preserving the tax exemption on bonds and private activity bonds.

"The real negotiations have started in earnest very recently between the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance, so this is the window," said Jarrod Loadholt, a partner at Ice Miller LLP.

"This is where members are seeing the words 'private activity bonds,' and their staffers are like, "What should I do?'" Loadholt said. "If you're an issuer, this is fly-in season. Sign up and go. Don't hope someone else is going to solve this for you — they're not."

Loadholt made the comments Tuesday during a webinar hosted by the Council of Development Finance Agencies urging members to press their federal representatives to preserve community development finance tools, chief among them private activity bonds.

The webinar comes as Congress is crafting a large tax package that could target tax exemptions on municipal bonds and private activity bonds.

Lawmakers are still debating how to advance the reconciliation tax package and scouring for potential revenue raisers while listening to pitches from various stakeholders hoping to see their priorities included, or excluded, as the case may be, in final legislation.

The Congressional calendar will serve as a guide to reconciliation negotiations, with recesses set for Memorial Day, July 4 and August.

"Do advocacy between now and then," Loadholt advised. "When there's a recess, they go home, so you want to see progress by those dates."

PABs are used by a swath of governmental entities, from airports to hospitals to charter schools and private colleges. Airports alone issued $22 billion in 2024, said Kristopher Wahlers, partner at Ice Miller LLP, during the webinar.

"Airports and multi-family and single-family housing, those are categories which have a huge market and have a huge impact," he said.

Wahlers noted that Congress has already placed limits on PABs with annual volume caps, which are allocated among states. "Congress has already done a lot of work to restrict how many of these can be issued," he said.

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