The Moberly City Council is making changes to the city’s investment policy three years after the Mamtek collapse damaged the city’s credit rating. Council members passed an ordinance Monday to update the city’s current policy for investment and debt management to help restore the rating.
Standard and Poors dropped Moberly’s credit rating from “A” to “B” in 2011 as a result of Mamtek’s closing. In a 2013 report, Standard and Poors stated the city could improve its rating if it continued to meet its debt payments and follow its debt management policies.
City manager Andrew Morris said the updated policy is meant to clearly identify the cases in which the city can and cannot invest money
“What this does is it, quite frankly, sets that to stone of what the city can invest in, and also our debt; what the city can do by way of what types of debt we can incur and what types we cannot,” Morris said.
Greg Hodge, the city’s director of finance, said the policy was updated in cooperation with the state’s guidelines on investment.
“Instead of trying to have a specific language in our policy, we basically just referred to the guidance of the state treasurer’s office on that, as far as the framework that we work with,” Hodge said.
A Missouri court charged former Mamtek CEO Bruce Cole with theft and securities fraud in 2012 for improperly using the city’s $39 million investment meant to build an artificial sweetener plant. Cole pleaded guilty to the charges earlier this month and will be sentenced on November 3rd.
