Top Stories Salt Lake City

The nation’s top-three credit agencies like Salt Lake County’s budget approach for the coming year and have again bestowed a top-tier AAA rating on it’s general obligation bonds.

Analysts at Standard & Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s rating services all praised the county’s plans to deal with declining revenues and one agency, Fitch, even upgraded its rating of lease revenue bonds — money used to finance projects like new libraries and senior centers.

Maintaining top ratings garners significant savings on debt service. A backslide on the general obligation bond rating of even one step, to AA+, could cost the county some $600,000 annually.

Mayor Peter Corroon’s chief financial officer, Darrin Casper, said the ratings help confirm the effort behind balancing the county’s budget in the midst of economic turmoil.

“At a time when many municipalities are concerned about losing their ratings, we were upgraded,” Casper said. “That’s a recognition of the sound fiscal approach that we’ve really worked toward.”

That approach was noted in reports issued by the ratings agencies, which include comments about the county’s “willingness to make expenditure reductions in response to declines in economically sensitive revenues,” “continuing solid financial results, supported by ongoing adherence to conservative financial management policies” and “historically strong management is … currently addressing budget challenges.”

Casper said Salt Lake County is one of only about 20 counties (out of more than 3,100) in the country to have earned AAA ratings from all three agencies.

e-mail: araymond@desnews.com