This course studies the issuance and management of debt by state and local governments from both a programmatic and transactional perspective. We will track the evolution of a bond transaction from the identification of financing need through the issuance of publicly sold debt. We will explore typical municipal debt structures with a focus on how they relate to the governmental purpose being financed. We will use EXCEL to model both the debt structures and the core calculations used in public finance to evaluate transactional performance. We will study in detail the primary offering document (the “Official Statement”) used to market municipal debt to investors. We will explore these topics with a special focus on the perspective of the public officials who issue and manage state and local debt but we will also study the concerns of other participants in the municipal securities marketplace including investment bankers, credit rating analysts, investors, regulators, bond attorneys and the federal officials who authorize the use of municipal debt by states and cities.