Removing Their Cap

Earlier this month, Stephen Howard, a senior vice president at Lehman Bros., told Congress it should lift the cap on tax-exempt private activity bonds as a way of helping communities finance costly water and sewer upgrades. The feds made a similar exemption in the 1980s to enable the construction of much-needed solid waste disposal facilities. Clearly, Howard's firm has something to gain by passage of H.R. 1708. What do state and local officials think about this approach?