MSRB seeks two public and two regulated members for board in FY 2027

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board will begin accepting applications next month for four open positions on its board of directors for fiscal year 2027 to replace two
representatives of regulated entities and two public members whose terms expire Sept. 30 2026.

The successful candidates for the two regulated member and two public member positions will each be elected to four-year terms that begin Oct. 1, 2026, which marks the start of the board's 2027 fiscal year.

MSRB Board Chair Natasha Holiday, a managing director and head of Infrastructure East at RBC Capital Markets, and Vice Chair Wendell Gaertner, a senior managing director at Public Resources Advisory Group, are the two regulated representatives whose board terms will expire in September.

David Belton, a former director at American Family Insurance who is now retired, and Horatio Porter, chief financial officer and assistant executive director of finance at the North Texas Tollway Authority, are the two public representatives whose board terms expire next year.

Porter also chairs the board's Nominating Committee.

"The Nominating Committee's goal is to achieve broad representation of the municipal securities market on the MSRB Board of Directors," Porter said in an MSRB press release issued Dec. 2.

At least one of the two new regulated members must be a non-dealer municipal advisor, and the Nominating Committee is also interested in applicants from broker-dealers that aren't affiliated with a bank, the release said.

Applications, which will be accepted from Jan. 5 through Feb. 13, 2026, are to be made via the ?MSRB Board of Directors Application Portal?. At least one letter of recommendation must accompany the application.

The four new board members the MSRB elected for FY 2026, whose four-year terms began on Oct. 1, were selected from a pool of more than 50 applicants, the MSRB said in a July press release.

The MSRB's board is tasked with "setting regulatory policy, authorizing rulemaking, enhancing market transparency systems, and overseeing operations for the organization," according to the MSRB's Dec. 2 release, which noted that board members receive compensation for their service.

The board is made up of 15 members, eight of whom must be representatives of the public, including investors, municipal entities and other individuals not regulated by the MSRB. The board's seven remaining members must be from firms regulated by the MSRB, including representatives of banks, broker-dealers and municipal advisors, the release said.