Hillary Phelps

Partner
Chapman & Cutler, LLP

Hillary Phelps is a partner and member of Chapman's National Public Finance Department. She serves as bond counsel, disclosure counsel, and underwriter’s counsel for a wide variety of tax-exempt and taxable financings throughout the country, focusing primarily on higher education, municipal, and not-for-profit transactions. Phelps advises clients with respect to various municipal securities issues, including post-issuance compliance and related regulatory matters. Additionally, she devotes a significant amount of her practice to new and developing areas of finance, including broadband finance and property assessed clean energy (PACE) finance.

Phelps began her career at Chapman, then served from 2015 to 2019 as senior counsel in the Office of Municipal Securities at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the area responsible for administering SEC rules on the practices of broker-dealers, municipal advisers, investors, and issuers in the municipal securities area, focusing on rulemaking, legislation, and policy formulation. While at the SEC, she was instrumental in advancing a number of SEC municipal disclosure initiatives, including proposing and finalizing amendments to Rule 15c2-12 and coordinating the inaugural SEC conference on municipal disclosure.

In addition to her experience at the SEC, she served on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s (MSRB) Market Transparency Advisory Group, which advised the MSRB board of directors on strategic initiatives to modernize and enhance the EMMA website and related systems in support of market transparency.