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To explain the new Municipal Advisor Rule that will take effect on July 1, 2014, which regulates persons and firms that provide advice to municipal issuers and obligated parties regarding municipal financial products or the issuance of municipal securities or that engage in certain solicitation of municipalities or obligors on behalf of third parties.

Explains who is treated as a Municipal Advisor, the standards applicable to Municipal Advisors, how the Rule may affect municipal securities issuers and obligated persons (collectively referred to as “Borrowers”) as well as other market participants, describes the exceptions and exemption s to the requirements of the Rule, and concludes with suggestions as to how Borrowers and other market participants may promote the flow of information.

The Rule will carry out a requirement of the Dodd-Frank Act, which provides that any party that provides advice to a Borrower regarding municipal financial products or the issuance of municipal securities must register with the SEC and the MSRB as a Municipal Advisor, unless such party qualifies for an exception or exemption under the Rule. Practical Implications: The Rule will change how information flows in the municipal securities market. Some consequences of the Rule may disadvantage Borrowers and other market participants. The Rule may restrict the flow of information provided to Borrowers by participants in the municipal securities marketplace that are not Municipal Advisors.

Practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

To describe the status of municipal advisor rulemaking by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB), and regulatory compliance approaches, under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act).

Examines the posture of the SEC, MSRB and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) upon completion of the MSRB’s core regulatory framework for municipal advisors. Explores threshold issues in determining municipal advisor status, approaches for preparing for and responding to initial regulatory compliance examinations by the SEC and FINRA, and key considerations in reviewing municipal advisor policies, procedures and business practices in light of the evolving regulatory and marketplace landscape.

SEC and FINRA compliance examiner feedback points to the expectation that municipal advisor policies, procedures, processes and records must be fully consistent with the firm’s business activities and must address each material aspect of all applicable MSRB and SEC rules, as well as the fiduciary duty of municipal advisors to their municipal entity clients under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Practical guidance from experienced securities and public finance attorney that provides a consolidated outline of key municipal advisor regulatory compliance obligations under the Dodd-Frank Act.

To analyze the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s new rule outlining the standards of conduct and fiduciary duties applicable to municipal advisors.

This article contains a summary of new MSRB Rule G-42 and identifies key areas where the final version of MSRB Rule G-42 differs from the initial proposal.

New MSRB Rule G-42 represents another significant milestone in the MSRB’s development of a comprehensive regulatory framework for municipal advisors mandated under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and imposes significant requirements on municipal advisors.

Practical guidance from experienced securities and financial services lawyers.

This paper aims to measure the trade price impact of a recent regulatory disclosure intervention in municipal securities secondary markets, which required broker-dealers to disclose securities trading information on a near-real-time and continuing basis.

The author analyzes trade price outcomes in the preintervention and postintervention regimes using a suite of time series estimations that give heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors (Prais–Winsten and Cochrain–Orcutt), accommodate higher-order lag structure in the error term (autoregressive integrated moving average) and account for volatility clustering in the time series (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity).

Results show that regulatory disclosure intervention significantly improved trade price efficiency in municipal securities secondary markets as daily trade price differential and volatility both declined market-wide after the disclosure intervention.

The sample consists of trades in State of California general obligation bonds; therefore, empirical findings may not be generalizable to other states, local governments and different types of bonds.

The findings highlight voluntary information disclosure as a practical and effective mechanism in disclosure regulation of municipal securities secondary markets.

Only a small body of work exists that examines information disclosure regulation in municipal securities secondary markets; therefore, this paper expands knowledge on the topic and should provide renewed impetus for regulatory efforts aimed at improving the efficiency of municipal capital markets.

The institutional conditions of primary care provision remain understudied in low- and middle-income countries. This study analyzes how primary care doctors cope with medical uncertainty in municipal clinics in urban India. As street-level bureaucrats, the municipal doctors occupy two roles simultaneously: medical professional and state agent. They operate under conditions that characterize health systems in low-resource contexts globally: inadequate state investment, weak regulation and low societal trust. The study investigates how, in these conditions, the doctors respond to clinical risk, specifically related to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

The analysis draws on year-long ethnographic fieldwork in Pune (2013–14), a city of three million, including 30 semi-structured interviews with municipal doctors.

Interpreting their municipal mandate to exclude NCDs and reasoning their medical expertise as insufficient to treat NCDs, the doctors routinely referred NCD cases. They expressed concerns about violence from patients, negative media attention and unsupportive municipal authorities should anything go wrong clinically.

The study contextualizes street-level service-delivery in weak institutional conditions. Whereas street-level workers may commonly standardize practices to reduce workload, here the doctors routinized NCD care to avoid the sociopolitical consequences of clinical uncertainty. Modalities of the welfare state and medical care in India – manifest in weak municipal capacity and healthcare regulation – appear to compel restraint in service-delivery. The analysis highlights how norms and social relations may shape primary care provision and quality.

This paper aims to present relevant literature review to build up the case pertaining to the impact of traditional leadership in the demarcation of municipal boundaries in South Africa. Municipal boundary demarcation remains a major contentious issue during the process of establishing municipalities. Little or no attention has been paid to the significance of traditional leadership in resolving issues around boundary demarcation between municipalities, hence this paper.

This paper adopted case study design. Data were collected from secondary sources and the contents were analyzed for this research purpose.

This paper put boundary in municipal context as a result of spatial reconfiguration process. It also discussed the impactful roles of traditional leadership as an institution involved in municipal (re)demarcation processes.

This paper focusses on the contemporary roles that traditional leadership is at vantage position to play in the process of municipal boundary demarcation. Therefore, the paper concludes that traditional leadership could resolve issue of ethnicity as a causal factor mitigating the redemarcation of municipal boundaries.

It contributes to existing knowledge by providing information on the roles of traditional leadership that could complement the resolution of the ethnic complexities arising from municipal (re)demarcation processes.

This study explores municipal leaders' perceptions on strategic human resource management in their local government organization. Previous studies on companies demonstrate that the top manager's perceptions of the importance of human resource management (HRM) for the organization are reflected in the quality of human resource management and its strategic role. The authors are interested in how leaders in municipalities perceive HRM.

The authors interviewed 30 leaders of Finnish municipalities for this qualitative study focused on municipal leaders' perceptions of HRM. The authors applied a discourse analytical approach in the analysis.

The authors recognized four discourses that frame perceptions of HRM: HRM as a strategic weapon, HRM as an underperformer, HRM as a matter of formality and HRM as a cost generator. In addition, the authors recognized that the discourses reflected leaders' self-positioning in relation to the power to impact issues related to HRM. Shifting between distinct roles demonstrated that municipal leaders' emphasis on HRM and its strategic alignment reflects the power relations in the municipality and the attitudes to the importance of HRM.

This study contributes to the academic discussions on HRM in municipalities and provides views on the municipal leader's role and impact on valuing and investing in HRM. From a practical point of view, the study will increase municipal leaders' knowledge of HRM's impact on the performance of the organization and also of the possible means of HRM.

The paper aims to explore the problems related to the financial management of municipal corporations in India and to suggest solutions.

The study is based on primary data collected from a sample of 577 employees of municipal corporations working in four metro cities of India, namely Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Delhi. Data were put through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis for problem identification and inferences were classified and grouped to map the solutions for these problems.

The study found that municipal corporations in India face four major problems or issues in their financial management. These problems are mainly related to the four dimensions: Power, Interruptions, Finances, and Resources. The model used to explore these four types of issues is named as “PIFR model” by the author.

The findings suggest that real-world problems can be represented through a conceptual model that helps in identifying practical suggestions which can be implemented by municipal corporations at the ground level for better financial management.

The purpose of this empirical case study is to study and explain the role of public leadership in the expansion of municipal climate action in Canada.

In 2017 and 2018, the authors conducted13 semi-directed interviews with municipal staff and elected officials from three municipalities, a documentary analysis of primary and secondary sources. Interviews and documentation collected were also coded using the software NVIVO 12. The authors compared three municipal case studies: the City of Toronto (Ontario), the City of Guelph (Ontario), and the Town of Bridgewater (Nova Scotia).

The authors found that leadership is a prominent factor explaining the expansion of municipal climate action in Canada. Municipal climate action is initiated and championed by an individual, elected officials or municipal staff, who lead and engage in the development of policy instruments to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. These leaders facilitate the formulation and implementation of instruments, encourage a paradigm shift within the municipality, overcome structural and behavioural barriers, and foster collaboration around a common vision. Optimal municipal climate leadership occurs when the leadership of elected officials and municipal is congruent, though networks play a significant role by amplifying municipal sustainability leadership. They support staff and elected officials leadership within municipalities, provide more information and funding to grow the capacity of municipalities to develop instruments, to the point that conditions under which municipalities are driving climate action are changing.

This paper hopes to contribute to better understand under what conditions municipalities drive change.

There is an international scholarly recognition that municipalities should be further explored and considered important actors in the Canadian and international climate change governance. Gore (2010) and Robinson and Gore (2015) highlighted that we are yet to understand the extent to which municipalities are involved in climate governance in Canada. This article directly addresses this gap in the current scholarly literature and explores the expansion of climate municipal leadership with the aspects of interviews.

Macedonian municipalities should pass anti‐corruption ordinances in order to reduce corruption. The purpose of this paper is to review the legal issues involved in drafting such ordinances and provide legal advisors to local councils with the legal and economic analysis needed to tackle some of the more difficult and detailed questions.

The most important issue revolves around the creation of a model ordinance which Macedonian municipalities (or the Association of Units of Local Self‐Government of the Republic of Macedonia) could adopt in order to set‐up and run municipal‐level anti‐corruption agencies. The location of such agencies as well as their competencies (to monitor conflicts of interests, oversee asset declarations, and conduct corruption risk‐audits among others) are analysed. The paper also provides legal interpretations of Macedonian legislation and their likely impact on municipal council ordinance design in the area of anti‐corruption – providing the legal basis for positive administrative silence, the splitting of municipal procurement contracts, and (most controversially) qui tam rewards at the municipal level.

A brief regulatory impact analysis of the ordinance shows a gain of €162,900 in social welfare if such a programme were rolled‐out in Macedonia.

The present paper provides some of the legal analysis which previous papers lack.