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Want To Learn About Mississippi’s Municipal Bonds?
Get Started with EMMA®
UPDATE
Did you know?
A municipality may not purchase goods or services from a business which employs a municipal elected of cial, such as a mayor or alderman/ councilman (public servants). Doing so is a violation of Section 109, Mississippi Constitution of 1890 as well as Section 25-4-105(2) and Section 25-4-105(3)(a) of the Mississippi Code of 1972.
Lynnette Kelly
More than 570 Mississippi cities, towns, other government agencies and the state itself use municipal bonds to  nance infrastructure and other community projects. In November, for example, the City of Flowood raised $20 million in urban renewal bonds to build and furnish community conference center near Jackson International Airport, and, in October, Jones County issued a $4.5 million general obligation bond for road, highway and bridge improvements. That month, investors and bond dealers bought and sold more than $418 million of Mississippi municipal bonds.
This is just a snapshot of the information freely available to Mississippi municipal of cials and citizens on the Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website, at emma.msrb.org. The EMMA website is operated by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), the Congressionally chartered, self-regulatory organization whose mission is to promote a fair and ef cient market for local bond offerings and other municipal securities that help  nance local schools, parks and other public projects. EMMA can be a valuable resource for local government of cials who have outstanding debt or may be considering issuing new bonds and want to compare themselves to other bond issuers within Mississippi or around the country.
The EMMA website was created nearly a decade ago as a resource for investors seeking information when buying or selling a bond, and municipalities that issue bonds make information available to investors through EMMA. For example, Mississippi bondholders can use EMMA to see that, in October, the City of Batesville posted its audited annual  nancial statements and Warren County announced it was redeeming $30 million worth of Gulf Opportunity Zone bonds. The EMMA website provides free public access to important documents associated with nearly every municipal bond, from the of cial statement to the most recent annual  nancial  ling from the government backing the bond.
Municipal bond issuers and others interested in the $3.8 trillion U.S. municipal bond market also use EMMA to inform their decision-making about issuing municipal bonds. Among the tools on EMMA that can support local governments when planning the timing of a new bond issue are a calendar listing upcoming bond offerings and another showing expected economic data reports or events. Additionally, EMMA provides access to several municipal market yield curves and indices. Many municipal issuers and their municipal advisors use yield curves as part of the bond pricing process to provide a benchmark when establishing offering yields on new bond issues.
The MSRB has been integrating new tools and resources on EMMA to enable users to explore and assess trends in the municipal securities market. Newly expanded market statistics allow EMMA users to view aggregate trading activity in each state and territory. State statistics can be  ltered by date range to view and compare trends over time. EMMA’s market statistics are updated daily and list the top 20 most actively traded municipal bonds and issuers around the country.
The MSRB recently concluded a year-long series of focus groups with local government of cials, investors and others to collect ideas
for how to improve EMMA to better meet the evolving information needs of today’s municipal bond market participants. As a result of that input, the MSRB will be making a series of changes in 2018, with plans to unveil a new look for EMMA to make it easier for users to navigate the website and explore all available tools and information.
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Stay up to date with new enhancements to EMMA by subscribing to EMMA Updates from the MSRB at MSRB.org.
Hear from other local government  nance professionals about how they use EMMA on
the MSRB’s YouTube channel, MSRB_News. Get frequent EMMA statistics and news updates from the MSRB’s Twitter feed @MSRB_News.
Volume 66 • Number 4
Mississippi Municipalities • 41


































































































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