Overview
Jim Burr is a partner, member of Chapman's Public Finance Department, and serves as the Office Leader of the firm’s Salt Lake City office. Jim's practice focuses on energy and project financings for joint action agencies, municipal utilities and public utility districts throughout the United States. His experience includes representation of electric and gas utilities in project and system financings, asset acquisitions, wholesale power and gas supply contracts, commodity price swaps, debt restructurings, and bondholder tender offers and consent solicitations. He has developed and executed innovative financing structures for renewable energy facilities and gas and electric prepayments.
Jim’s experience also includes extensive work in the areas of municipal securities law and disclosure. He has represented national and regional underwriters in public, private and Rule 144A offerings of tax exempt and taxable debt, and assists issuers and underwriters in the preparation of new issue and continuing disclosure documents. He regularly writes and lectures on current developments in SEC and MSRB rules and regulations governing the municipal securities market and disclosure practices.
Jim maintains an active general public finance practice in the western states, and serves as bond counsel, disclosure counsel and underwriter’s counsel on a variety of transactions, including financings for colleges and universities, water and sewer, resource recovery, public transportation and telecommunications revenue bond offerings, certificates of participation and lease revenue financings, and general obligation bond and tax note offerings.
Representative Matters
- Bond and special counsel to a joint action agency in connection with the development of a 58 MW wind farm, a prepaid 20-year power purchase agreement and a cash grant under Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
- Counsel to the underwriters of $716 million of revenue bonds issued in multiple series by a newly-formed joint action agency to finance the construction of a 220 MW electric generating unit.
- Bond counsel to a joint action agency in connection with the financing of a 140 MW natural gas-fired electric generating unit.
- Underwriter’s counsel in connection with the financing of a 205 MW wind farm by a consortium of public utility district and cooperative utilities.
- Counsel to a statewide group of municipal utilities in connection with long-term power purchase agreements with a federal power marketing agency, including a test case on constitutional debt issues before the state supreme court and a resulting amendment to the debt provisions of the state constitution.
- Counsel to the initial purchaser of $152 million of revenue bonds issued to finance a central utility plant at the national interagency biodefense campus.
- Counsel to the underwriters of over $7.5 billion of revenue bonds issued by various joint action agencies and municipal utilities to finance long-term prepayments for natural gas.
Practice Focus
Admitted
Utah, 1984
California, 2004
Education
University of Wisconsin Law School, J.D., cum laude, 1984
Brown University, A.B., 1978
Insights
Publications
Presentations
- SEC Enforcement Actions Against Municipal Bond Issuers, International Municipal Lawyers Association 2013 Annual Conference.
