The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a proposed rule in Release No. 34-58255, Proposed Amendment to Municipal Securities Disclosure, on July 30, 2008, to improve disclosures for municipal securities.

The proposal would amend Rule 15c2-12 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by establishing a single centralized information repository to receive and distribute electronic filings. If the proposal is approved as a final rule, broker-dealers would have to determine that an issuer has agreed to provide the information electronically to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) instead of the multiple nationally-recognized municipal securities information repositories and state information depositories.

The proposal will be open for comment for 45 days after its publication in the Federal Register, which normally occurs a few days after a rule is posted to the SEC's website.

The proposal follows from a decision the SEC reached at its July 30 meeting that covered several items aimed at improving disclosures in the municipal market. Included in these changes is a plan to improve the quality of disclosures for existing bond issues through the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's Electronic Municipal Market Access system. The EMMA system would be expanded from a pilot program, replacing the MSRB's old and little used Continuing Disclosure Information Net (CDINet).

The expansion of EMMA would allow for the electronic collection through the MSRB's website of continuing disclosure documents and related information and for free public access.

The SEC last tackled the issue of electronic municipal securities disclosure in 2006 when it published for comment proposed amendments to Rule 15c2-12 in response to a petition from the MSRB to close the CDINet.