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9A Page 3 financlngs. BABs complement and can be combined with any RZED or tax-exempt financing to achieve the lowest overall borrowing cost. Questions of Size While BABs can be issued in all sizes and by most types of municipal credits, RZEDs are strictly limited based on the federal allocations to each community. In California, these allocations range from less than $1 million to more than $175 million (City of Los Angeles) with a median allocation of $4.8 million for the 49 larger cities (with a population greater than 100,000). Smaller cities looking to work with their counties to share in the remaining county allocations can expect allocations in the $1 million to $5 million range. While many of these RZED allocations may be combined with BABs or traditional tax-exempt bonds to create larger financings, it is likely that many federal economic recovery-based taxable bond financings are going to be less than $20 million. 81 AR Bond Program Helps Cities Move Forward To provide the lowest possible financing costs for cities wishing to use the ARRA financing tools, California Communities - a joint powers authority sponsored by the California State Association of Counties and the League of California Cities - is working with private-sector partners to Implement a pooled issuance platform called Statewide Taxable American Recovery (STAR) Bonds. The STAR Bond Program is open to California public agencies issuing RZEDs and BABs. Designed to provide issuers with a bond pooling vehicle that benefits each individual issuer, the bond program's features include: . Standardized documents that help lower the costs of issuance; . Structuring intended to produce high taxable-market acceptance; . Pooling with similar credits to present a larger Issue size; and . The 10-year "par call" traditionally used for municipal bonds. The STAR Bond Program's goals are to establish a strong and continued market presence for California taxable municipal bonds and enable California cities and counties to quickly move forward with economic recovery-based projects. California Communities and its private-sector partners have structured this new program to provide California cities with an efficient and flexible method of securing the benefits of the taxable bond market. The STAR Bond Program does not require any shared credit risks or cross- collaterallzatlon. Furthermore, the program is designed so that each community can retain its own local financial advisor and bond counsel to structure its local financing program. For more information on the STAR Bond Program, contact James Hamill at (925) 933-9229, ext. 216, or Mark Curran at (415) 984-5139. To learn more about California Communities, visil www.cacommunities.ora. This article appears in the November 2009 issue of Western City (www.WesternCitv.com). which covered municipal finance. 'ARRA' Continued from Page 1... GAO aimed several of its recommendations at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which spearheaded the regulatory process for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Specifically, GAO stated that OMS should: 1. "Clarify the definition and standardize the period of measurement for FTEs and work with federal agencies to align this guidance with OMB's guidance and across agencies; 2. Given its reporting approach, consider being more explicit that 'jobs created or retained' are to be reported as hours worked and paid for with ARRA funds; 3