Public Finance

We handle general obligation and revenue bonds for governmental entities. In Georgia, we acted as bond counsel for the State of Georgia’s $503 million bond issue, for facilities refunding bonds for Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport totaling $276 million; for the City of Atlanta’s $155 million general obligation bonds; for Fulton County’s $276 million water and sewerage revenue bond financing; as underwriter’s counsel for $46 million in bonds for the Cherokee County Water and Sewerage Authority; and as bank counsel for the letter of credit banks for the $200 million Georgia Dome.
In the energy sectors, we served as counsel to Public Gas Partners, Inc., a Georgia nonprofit corporation representing seven natural gas joint action agencies in six states, in connection with its issuance of $125 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance the purchase of natural gas reserves. We also represented MEAG Power in its issuance of $2.53 billion in bonds to fund the majority of the cost of its portion of two new nuclear generating units, the first in the U.S. in over 20 years. We have also worked with joint action issuers, including Main Street Natural Gas, Inc., The Southeast Alabama Gas District and Central Plains Energy Project in pioneering transactions for the prepayment for long-term natural gas supplies from the proceeds of tax-exempt bonds. Since 2006, we have represented issuers as bond counsel in natural gas prepayment transactions in the issuance of more than $3.9 billion in tax-exempt bonds.
Over the last ten years, we have assisted private companies in securing millions of dollars of economic incentives involving projects representing an aggregate investment of over $2.2 billion. We assisted an international manufacturer in securing economic incentives for a $500 million plant, a large communications company on a series of office projects representing an aggregate investment of $910 million, build-to-suit developers on several office and manufacturing projects, a public REIT in connection with its acquisition of a large manufacturing project and several foreign–based automotive parts manufacturers. In addition, three national retailers retained us to represent their interests in the negotiation of economic incentives in connection with the development of a new regional shopping mall that involved eight different bond issues, five anchor stores and several public bodies.
We served as bond counsel, bank counsel or underwriters counsel in connection with the issuance of over $1.3 billion of tax-exempt debt for numerous health care providers during the last five years.
We represented the indenture trustee in connection with bond defaults involving over $192 million in taxable bonds used to finance four privatized military housing projects located in four different states.
We served as bond counsel or as underwriter’s counsel for ten different colleges and universities (including the Georgia Institute of Technology and The University of Tennessee (Knoxville and Chattanooga) in tax-exempt student housing financings.
We served as bond counsel for the State of North Carolina in connection with the issuance of a $106 million refunding bond issue and its $16 million taxable natural gas bond issue.
As bond counsel for several local school districts, we devised an annual short-term construction note financing program, utilizing funds from special purpose local option sales taxes for educational purposes to repay such financings, which maximized investment earnings on tax receipts.