Highlights
Training Opportunities
NLC Registration Brochure Available
Take a look at this year’s impressive lineup of speakers and education sessions by downloading your copy of the Registration Brochure for this year's National Leadership Conference. Also find information about registration, hotel accommodations, travel discounts and more. Earn 14 CPE hours at outstanding technical sessions, and take advantage of this opportunity to network, exchange ideas and meet new friends.
SAS No. 112 Topic of Thursday Audio Conference
The National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers (NASACT), in conjunction with AGA and the Association of Local Government Auditors, is pleased to announce its next audio conference, SAS No. 112: Intermediate Reporting Issues and Case Studies. This training will provide an intermediate-level review of SAS No. 112. The speaker is Frank Crawford, CPA, of Crawford & Associates.
Set for 2 – 3:50 p.m. EST, Thursday, Jan. 17, the audio conference is worth 2 CPE hours.
Cost is $299 per site (unlimited attendance). Questions? Call Pat Hackney at 859.276.1147 or send an e-mail to support@nasact.org.
Internal Controls Audio Conference Set for Feb. 6
AGA, in conjunction with NASACT and the Association of Local Government Auditors, is pleased to announce a new audio conference, Using Internal Controls to Improve Operations. The audio conference, worth 2 CPE hours, is set for 2 – 3:50 pm EST, Feb. 6, 2008. Good internal controls can be used for far more than ensuring the right numbers are used in financial statements. Good controls can improve accountability, prevent problems and most important, improve service delivery.
Speakers are: Janet Hayes, MBA, CPM, CICA, Director of the Management Services and Nongovernmental Compliance Division, Office of the State Auditor, State of North Carolina; Michael L. Piazza, MBA, CICA, Principal Associate and lead consultant of Professional Development Associates and Director of Program Development and Training for the Institute for Internal Controls; and Martha J. Stearns, Central Site Director, Cleveland Center, U.S. Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
Cost is $249 per site (unlimited attendance) if you register by Feb. 1, and $299 thereafter. Government agencies and CPAG members who register five or more offices can receive a 20 percent discount ($200 per site).
Register online, or print the regular registration form, or the special promotion registration form and fax it to 703.684.6933. View the entire audio conference schedule.
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January 14, 2008 • News from the Profession
AGA Today is Brought to You by AGA Corporate Partner Clifton Gunderson
 Clifton Gunderson offices in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, MD and Harrisburg, PA are looking for experienced professionals to join our public sector practice. The ideal candidate will have 5+ yrs of Public Accounting or equivalent audit experience along with your BA/BS in Accounting and CPA or CGFM. Duties will include audits of Federal entities, State & Local audits (GASB), A-133 audits, and compliance auditing. To apply please e-mail Michael.Armstrong@cliftoncpa.com.
Delete at Your Own Risk; Few Governments Have a System for Managing E-mail
For several months last fall, the St. Louis media had a field day with Missouri Governor Matt Blunt's office for doing the equivalent of crumpling up important office correspondence and tossing it away. Employees weren't using a wastebasket, though. They were tossing out messages by clicking "delete" on their computers. Staff members insisted there was no written policy in their office on saving and deleting the e-mails. They said they routinely erased the messages because they didn't view them as part of the public record. In the ensuing controversy, Blunt announced a
"permanent" e-mail retention system would be created, and employees would no longer be able to make case-by-case decisions on what to save.
Missouri's is not the only government that has been stumbling over vague or non-existent e-mail policy. Millions of state and local employees in jurisdictions all over the country correspond by e-mail every day without giving much thought to what should happen to the product. They may come to regret that behavior. Not only are records, and history, being lost, but many government lawsuits now turn on what is buried in old e-mail messages. Government policy simply has not kept up with the evolving technology. —Ellen Perlman, Governing. Read more.
Sparing Trees, Saving Money: The Fiscal 2009 ‘E-Budget’
There will be no delivery truck pulling up to the White House next month to unload freshly printed copies of President Bush’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal, which is likely to total more than 2,000 pages. The White House estimates it would need to order more than 3,000 copies of the books this year in order to provide copies to its own staff, lawmakers and the news media as it has done in the past. Instead, it will send those eager readers to an Office of Management and Budget website on Feb. 4, the day Bush will submit his new budget to Congress. The move is an effort to save money and spare some trees, budget director Jim Nussle said. “This step will save nearly 20 tons of paper, or roughly 480 trees,” Nussle said in a statement. “In terms of fiscal savings, we estimate the E-Budget will save nearly a million dollars over the next five years.” —Congressional Quarterly. Read more.
Federal Accounting Corner
Linking Available Authority Account Balances to the Budget
Integration of the budget with the Standard General Ledger is necessary for good financial management. While OMB and Treasury's Financial Management Service are only interested in the highest level of information (whether or not the funds are apportioned or available), the agency may find it useful to map general ledger accounts to each budget level. This allows agency personnel to use the trial balance to quickly see the status of budgets at a fund-wide or even higher level. — Simcha Kuritzky, CGFM, CPA. Read more.
Huge Tab for Retiree Health Care in California
For the first time, California taxpayers have a fix on the total price tag for covering health care benefits for retired public employees over the next 30 years: More than $118.1 billion. Public agencies have saved enough to meet just 22 percent of this massive tab, according to a special commission convened by the governor. By contrast, governments have enough money to pay for 89 percent of their long-term pension promises. "The clear message is: Don't postpone things. The state clearly needs to lead the way," said Gerard Parsky, chairman of the Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission. "It may cause choices (to be made). It may cause priorities to be shifted." Indeed, public agencies will be under pressure to reduce benefits, raise employee contributions and co-payments or close benefits to new workers to fund the bill. Taxpayers will likely lose some services as political leaders try to cover the costs. If nothing is done, public agencies will see credit ratings and, consequently, their cost of borrowing increase. And, of course, the bill would mount as medical inflation continues skyrocketing and the baby boomer generation swells the ranks of retirees. —Gilbert Chan, Sacramento Bee. Read more.
GAO Creates Checklist for Auditor Requirements
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has developed a checklist to help auditors apply and document the appropriate auditing standards for various types of assessments. The guidance follows revisions that GAO made in July to the standards language. The Professional Requirements Tool describes which requirements “must” and which “should” be used to comply with financial, performance and other audits, said Jeanette Franzel, director of GAO’s financial management and assurance issues, in the document published Jan. 2. The July 2007 Revision of the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards, also called the “Yellow Book,” clarified language that defines an auditor’s level of responsibility and distinguishes between auditor requirements and additional guidance. Even with the use of the checklist, auditors still need to be familiar with the explanatory material from the standards revision so that they make the appropriate professional judgments about compliance with requirements. —Mary Mosquera, Federal Computer Week. Read more.
States Target Bureaucrat-ese, Save Money
If any government entity can confuse the public, it’s the tax collectors. That’s why Gale Garriott, director of Arizona’s Department of Revenue, was intrigued when he heard tax collectors from Washington state claim in late 2005 they had collected millions more after rewriting confusing letters to taxpayers. “I’m thinking ‘Really? You just change words on paper and good things will happen?” Garriott recalled. Since then, Arizona’s state government has saved thousands by removing bureaucratic jargon from its official documents. The efforts also have resulted in happier employees of state agencies and more satisfied agency customers. Now, employees of Arizona’s revenue department are sharing their experiences with officials in California, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon and Texas. —Amanda J. Crawford, The Arizona Republic. Read more.
Report Reveals Career Priorities of Gen Y
Baby boomers and Generation Y may have less of a generation gap than one might assume. Research from Robert Half International and Yahoo! HotJobs reveals that "millennials" share many of the same concerns as more tenured workers when it comes to saving for retirement, finding a solid healthcare plan and achieving work-life balance. However, Gen Y workers aren’t concerned only with the benefits their employers provide. They also expect a lot from their company leaders and look to them as partners in success and job satisfaction. —SmartPros. Read more.
XBRL Skeptics Doubt Interactive Financial Data Will Be of Much Use
Despite a relentless push by the Securities and Exchange Commission to promote its "interactive data" agenda, skepticism of XBRL won't die. Critics have called the introduction of extensible business-reporting language, or XBRL, a boon for consultancies and regulators but a pain for practitioners. After attending a panel last month on the SEC and accounting developments in Atlanta, Jay Starkman, who runs an accounting firm there, was so unimpressed that he penned a letter to The Financial Times complaining that XBRL is a "consulting product" in search of a market. "If it was really that great, it wouldn't have to be mandated," Starkman told CFO.com. "It's being pushed by the people who have an interest in pushing it." Proponents hope it will make financial data easier to sort and analyze, but others see it as an expensive gimmick. In the midst of the debate on XBRL's merits, the SEC has moved forward with making the technology ready for prime time. Last year, the commission completed the development of data tags for the entire system of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and began contemplating whether XBRL should be mandated. —Alan Rappeport, CFO.com. Read more.
Five Taxpayer Traps for 2008
Delayed tax returns and late tax code changes are among the most serious problems facing taxpayers today, according to taxpayer advocate Nina Olson in an annual report to Congress. The National Taxpayer Advocate is appointed by the Treasury Secretary and is charged with representing taxpayer interests before the IRS and Congress. Among 29 of the most serious taxpayer problems outlined in the report, here are five that Olson detailed: missed refunds, refund delays, refund anticipation loans, identity theft and taxpayer assistance troubles. —Althea Chang, CNNMoney.com. Read more.
One More Day to Comment on FASAB Proposal
 The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has extended until Jan. 15, 2008 the comment period for the Exposure Draft, Reporting Gains and Losses from Changes in Assumption and Selecting Discount Rates and Valuation Dates. One effect of the proposal would be an additional line item or multiple line items on the statement of net costs displaying the effect of changes in assumptions made when estimating liabilities when long-term assumptions are employed. Assumptions are considered long term if the underlying event about which the assumption is made will not occur for five years or more. The proposal also requires a new note disclosure, amends guidance for selecting a discount rate, and provides guidance on the valuation date for liabilities.
FAF Trustee Proposal Would Impact Oversight and Structure of the GASB/FASB
 Given the changing environment in the accounting standards-setting realm, the Board of Trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), the parent organization of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), approved in mid-December a series of recommendations for public exposure that is designed to better position the FAF and the boards to become more effective and efficient. AGA members are encouraged to read the proposal and, if they wish, comment on it. A copy of the recommendations may be viewed on the GASB website. Comments must be received in writing by Feb. 10, 2008. Submissions should be e-mailed to tspolly@f-a-f.org or sent to: Teresa S. Polley, Chief Operating Officer, Financial Accounting Foundation, 401 Merritt 7, Norwalk, CT 06856-5116.
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