In its recently-released Report on the Municipal Securities Market, the Securities and Exchange Commission asked Congress to increase the SEC’s authority to regulate the municipal securities market, which it described as “decentralized . . . illiquid and opaque.” While the SEC has brought a handful of enforcement actions against issuers of municipal securities based on allegedly-misleading offering materials, most recently against the state of New Jersey in 2010 and the city of San Diego in 2006, it has done so rarely because municipal securities are exempted from most of the provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. READ MORE →