NEW MEXICO’S BUSINESS LAWYERS ®

NEW MEXICO'S BUSINESS LAWYERS ®

Public Finance and Tax Incentives

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Our public finance and tax incentives practice includes municipal bonds, industrial revenue bonds, general commercial and tax matters, administrative and regulatory law including lobbying and utilities regulation, securities, real estate, labor law, and litigation of all kinds. The Firm represents state agencies and authorities, municipalities, counties, educational institutions, non-profit organizations, corporations, utilities, hospitals and insurers. We serve as bond counsel to the New Mexico Finance Authority for its State Transportation bond program, loan counsel to NMFA for its Public-Project Revolving Fund program, and bond counsel to the Renewable Energy Transmission Authority.

We have been listed in The Bond Buyer’s Municipal Marketplace (formerly The Bond Buyer’s Directory of Municipal Bond Dealers of the United States) since 1982, and, as such, are recognized both nationally and statewide as an independent bond counsel. The Firm was the first of the major commercial law firms in New Mexico to be listed in that publication. The Firm has participated as counsel in the issuance of more than $17.2 billion in tax exempt securities and more than $4.1 billion in taxable municipal securities. We are experienced in a broad range of tax-exempt financings.

Industrial Revenue Bonds

  • We have participated in industrial revenue bond transactions in the state of New Mexico for 30 years.
  • We served as bond counsel to St. John’s College for an industrial revenue bond issued by the City of Santa Fe.
  • We served as bond counsel to Schott Solar Inc. in the issuance of industrial revenue bonds for its manufacturing facility in the Mesa del Sol area of Albuquerque.
  • We served as bond counsel to Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center for industrial revenue bonds issued by the City of Alamogordo.
  • We served as issuer’s counsel to Torrance, Sierra and Luna counties, and for the Village of Grady, for industrial revenue bonds for wind energy facilities.
  • We served as bond counsel to SUMCO Phoenix Corporation in a City of Albuquerque industrial revenue bond for equipment at its existing facility and as bond counsel to the Andaluz Hotel in Albuquerque for renovations at that hotel.

Manufacturing IRBs

Attorneys at our firm have also served as lead or co-chair IRB attorneys (at Sutin or at prior firms)  for the following manufacturing projects:

  • Intel/ $16,000,000,000 Sandoval County IRBs
  • first Solar Cimarron/ $110,000,000 Colfax County
  • Tempur Pedic/ $100,000,000 Bernalillo County IRBs
  • NRG Solar Roadrunner/ $81,600,000 Dona Ana County IRBs
  • Hewlett Packard-Titan Realty/ $63,500,000 City of Rio Rancho IRBs
  • Monarch Litho/ $41,000,000 Dona Ana County IRBs
  • Clovis Biodiesel/ $15,300,000 City of Clovis, New Mexico.
  • Prime Therapeutics/ $9,500,000 Bernalillo County IRBs
  • RMS Foods/ $8,000,000 (Tax Exempt) Hobbs New Mexico IRBs
  • ATC Foundation/ $6,735,000 Santa Fe County IRBs

State Tax Expertise

During the IRB process, complicated tax issues frequently arise requiring significant state and local tax expertise. Our IRB team includes our state and local tax expert who works closely with our clients to ensure that they are able to properly structure and maximize the tax benefits afforded under IRB and to address any particular tax issues which arise during the course of the IRB transaction.

Related Representative Experience

  • We have served as bond counsel to numerous New Mexico counties and municipalities.
  • We have served as bond counsel to the New Mexico Finance Authority in the issuance of more than $2.3 billion of State Transportation Revenue and Refunding Revenue Bonds and taxable and tax-exempt lines of credit and with existing qualified exchange, or “swap,” agreements. We have worked closely with NMFA, the State Transportation Commission and the New Mexico Department of Transportation on these bonds and lines of credit.
  • We served as special counsel to the NMFA and the Economic Development Department in the implementation of the Statewide Economic Development Financing Act, and have had various disclosure counsel relationships with NMFA.
  • We served as bond counsel to the New Mexico Renewable Energy Transmission Authority, structuring and closing RETA’s first bond issue for the High Lonesome Mesa, LLC, wind energy transmission project.
  • We served as project counsel for a public-private partnership with Goldman Sachs to construct a high-voltage transmission line for 1500 MW of new renewable energy transmission. The project has required a broad knowledge of RETA’s status as a governmental instrumentality, along with experience in various forms of financing.
  • We have served as co‑bond counsel to the New Mexico Educational Assistance Foundation since the Foundation’s inception in 1981. We closed a series of education loan bonds totaling $167.3 million.
  • We have over the years acted as bond counsel, underwriter’s counsel, trustee’s counsel and purchaser’s counsel on a wide variety of municipal and industrial development revenue bond issues.
  • We regularly analyze New Mexico constitutional and statutory provisions concerning the issuance of debt and revenue bonds. In our analysis of proposed financings, the Firm has dealt with such issues as nonappropriation and nonsubstitution clauses as they affect constitutional “debt” powers of constitutional home rule municipalities related to the issuance of debt and revenue bonds, cross-pledging of revenues, the “anti-donation” clause of the New Mexico Constitution, issues related to the New Mexico Joint Powers Act, the Open Meetings Act, the Public Records Act and the Procurement Code.
  • We served as issuer’s counsel to the Department of Health in the general obligation lease-purchase of the Fort Bayard Medical Center.

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