The Dykema Public Finance practice is concentrated in our Lansing, Bloomfield Hills, Detroit and Chicago offices. We have experience with virtually every governmental purpose bond financing vehicle at the state and local levels in Michigan, and with the myriad federal tax and securities law aspects of municipal bond issues.

In recent years, we have been involved in public finance transactions in an aggregate principal amount exceeding $12 billion, serving in the capacities of bond counsel, underwriter counsel, letter of credit bank counsel and private borrower counsel. We have worked with all of the national and regional underwriters and finance advisors active in the Midwest. Our experience encompasses the full range of traditional and innovative financing structures.

The firm has served as bond counsel to the State of Michigan and to eight State of Michigan financing authorities: the Michigan State Building Authority; the Michigan Municipal Bond Authority; the Michigan Department of Transportation; the Michigan Higher Education Student Loan Authority; the Michigan Economic Development Authority; the Michigan Jobs Development Authority; the Michigan Strategic Fund (with respect to which our attorneys have also served as Special Assistant Attorneys General), and the newly-formed Michigan Public Educational Facilities Authority.

Additionally, the firm regularly serves as bond counsel for a large number of counties, cities, villages, townships and public authorities to finance such diverse local governmental projects as roads and streets, storm and sanitary sewer systems, wastewater treatment plants, water systems, public buildings (including jails, libraries and governmental office buildings of various kinds), public health care facilities and municipal equipment purchases (such as computers and police, fire, sanitation and other public vehicles), as well as cash flow borrowings.

Our involvement in private activity bond financings through governmental “conduit” issuers for qualified charitable, educational and cultural organizations (501(c)(3) organizations) and qualified industrial companies is extensive. We have experience with private activity bond financings in most Midwest states, including Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Dykema is listed as approved bond counsel in The Bond Buyer’s Municipal Marketplace (the so-called “Red Book”), the principal directory of its kind. Several of the firm’s attorneys are members of and active in the National Association of Bond Lawyers, the major professional association of the bond counsel community. 

For more information about our Public Finance practice, please contact:
Bowden Brown 248-203-0800    James Kiefer 517-374-9126