NORRISTOWN PA – Montgomery County‘s credit is good, even “coveted,” county officials said Tuesday (Aug. 2, 2011) . But wait a day or two, they sadly concede, and that could change.

A press release issued by the county Communications Office said it had been notified that Moody’s Investors Service awarded a bond rating of “Aaa,” considered high in municipal circles. The county asked Moody’s for a rating because it expects to issue $35 million in bonds to refinance existing debt, following an anticipated county commissioners’ vote next week.

Moody’s “is among the world’s most respected and widely utilized sources for credit ratings, research and risk analysis,” the release claimed. And in it, Commissioners’ Chairman Jim Matthews boasted, “county finances are as sound as they have ever been.”

But if there’s a fly about to land in this financial ointment, it is the federal government’s own money troubles. Moody’s also told the county its rosy rating would be subject to “review for a possible downgrade” as a result of Washington’s recent problems with the national debt ceiling, and how it might relate to county finances.

An agreement Tuesday between Congress and President Obama to raise the debt ceiling “averted an immediate disaster,” Matthews said.

However, “it didn’t change the fact that the United States (by 2014) is going to be $20 trillion in debt and climbing … with a minimum of three years more of deficit spending after that,” Matthews added. “Moody’s and everyone else in the international financial community” will look closely “at all government financing for years to come,” he said.

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