Highlights
Save Time…Renew Your AGA Membership
Online in 2005
Annual renewal time is upon us. Membership
and CGFM renewal packages were mailed in early February and are due to
be paid by March 31, 2005. To renew online, access the website, click on ‘Members
Only’ on the left menu. Login using your membership ID number and
password (your first initial followed by your last name – no
spaces), then click on the ‘Billing’ button at the top
right hand corner of the screen. Your renewal fees will automatically
appear. Input your credit card information and hit
‘Submit.’ While you are logged in, take a moment to update
your contact information. Questions? Contact the AGA Customer Satisfaction
Center.
PDC 2005 Registration Now Open
Join us in sunny Orlando
for the government financial management education event of the year!
AGA invites you to attend its 54th Annual Professional Development
Conference & Exposition, to be held July 10 – 13, 2005, in
Orlando, FL. PDC 2005 promises to be an excellent learning and
networking opportunity for government financial managers and
accountability professionals. Education sessions will provide technical
training, useful information on emerging trends, tools to help you
become more effective and lessons from the best in the business. In
addition to an outstanding technical program, we have arranged a number
of social events to ensure an exceptional conference experience. You
can register online or print the registration form to register by fax
or mail. Advance registration discounts apply to all forms received
before June 10, 2005.
Click here to register.
Call for 2005 National Awards Nominations
AGA’s National Awards Committee is now accepting
nominations for 10 National Awards that recognize the leaders advancing
our profession and setting the standards of excellence. In many cases,
individuals do not have to be members of AGA to be eligible. All
nominations are due Friday, March 18, and awards will be presented
during AGA's Professional Development Conference & Exposition in
Orlando, FL July 10 – 13. Click here for all
nomination forms and for more information, or contact Rosanna Ortiz.
Studying for
CGFM Examinations?
Be sure to order one of the study guides available for
CGFM Exams 2 and 3 to help you prepare. Click here
to learn more. |
March 7, 2005
• News from the Profession
Survey: States Make
Strides in Homeland Security
The National Governors Association’s Best Practices Center has
released the findings of a survey of state homeland security advisers
identifying the progress and remaining homeland security challenges
facing states. The survey completed in August 2004 by 38 of the 55
state and territorial homeland security directors was taken shortly
before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“States have rallied to plan, coordinate and implement a number
of initiatives to prevent and respond to terrorist acts," said the
NGA issue brief, called, Homeland Security in the States: Much
Progress, More Work. "States have also expanded their
internal security capacity and worked with federal and local partners
toward building a comprehensive network of resources to implement
homeland security initiatives." Despite a general lack of
precedent to assist their work, states have made great strides in
protecting their borders and preventing future attacks, in part by
employing the following strategies: establishing statewide emergency
operations centers; designing exercises to train first responders while
identifying weaknesses in agency response plans; focusing attention on
bioterrorism preparedness and acting to amend policies and laws related
to isolation and quarantine practices; and developing mutual assistance
agreements with neighboring states for sharing National Guard
resources, equipment and personnel. —NGA Center for Best
Practices.
Click here to read the entire
article.
Accounting Grads Face
Promising Job Market
Graduates expected to be in demand this year are those majoring in
accounting, business administration, marketing, computer science and
engineering, a new survey says. The job market for the Class of 2005 is
predicted to be the best since the Class of 2000, according to Michigan
State University’s annual Recruiting Trends survey. The survey
ranked respondents in order of the number of projected hires from
college recruiting. In the top 20 are: PricewaterhouseCoopers with
3,170, Ernst & Young LLP with 2,900, KPMG with 2,240, Accenture
with 1,540 and Grant Thornton with 500 projected hires.
—AccountingWEB. Click
here to read the entire article.
GAO: Fortune
500 Firms Bought Tax Shelter Services
More than 60 of the nation's 500 largest corporations got tax
shelter services between 1998 and 2003 from accounting firms hired to
independently audit the companies' financial statements, the U.S.
Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported Thursday. The
transactions GAO studied cost the government $3.4 billion, the report
said. Some had been deemed abusive shelters—complex transactions
designed solely to lower taxes by exploiting loopholes or legal
technicalities. All were among the 30 types of potentially questionable
transactions that must be disclosed to the Internal Revenue Service.
The transactions deemed abusive cost the government $1.8 billion.
Michigan Democrat U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, who requested the study, said,
“If we are going to restore public confidence in the financial
statements of our public companies, auditors of those companies can't
be selling them abusive tax shelters that distort and misrepresent the
companies' tax liabilities and income.” —SmartPros. Click here to read
the entire article.
AGA Today is brought to you by UMUC
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University of Maryland University College, an accredited university, is
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Federal
Accounting Corner—When Spending Isn't
The Standard General Ledger (SGL) addresses
general ledger accounts, though there are other important elements of
the accounting strip. An agency's budget often limits spending by
object class (OC), which is a two-digit designator of the type of
spending that has occurred. For example, the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) uses 11 for personal compensation, and 21 for travel. Most
agencies use a four-digit designator, that is more specific than OMB's
OC. In the original SGL, there were only three spending accounts:
4700 for commitments, 4800 for obligations and 4900 for expenditures.
The only postings to these accounts were for spending (e.g.,
obligating, expending, liquidating obligations). In 1996, the SGL was
expanded to differentiate between paid and unpaid spending, as well as
to separate new spending, downward adjustments, and upward adjustments.
This means that postings to these accounts not only take place for
spending, but also for disbursements and adjustments. — Simcha
Kuritzky, CGFM, CPA.
Click here to read the entire article.
D.C. Heading for Record-High
Budget Surplus
The District is running nearly a $400
million budget surplus for the current fiscal year, according to new
estimates released by Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi, CGFM.
In January, the city announced that unexpectedly strong revenue driven
by a hot real estate market left the District with a record budget
surplus for fiscal 2004 and more than $1.2 billion in the bank. The new
estimates of a surplus just five months into fiscal 2005 show that the
city's booming real estate market is continuing to power a windfall in
revenue, city officials say. Gandhi said revenue is running $395.1
million above estimates at the beginning of the year. If Gandhi's
projection holds, the surplus would set a record. —Eric M. Weiss,
The Washington Post.
Click here to read the entire article.
Databases Called Lax
With Personal Information
The Social Security numbers of millions of Americans, including
Vice President Cheney and celebrity heiress Paris Hilton, are available
to many subscribers of a widely used information database company, U.S.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said recently. Schumer called one
feature offered by Westlaw an "egregious" invitation to
identity theft. The "People-Find" feature lets some Westlaw
users type in any name and receive personal data about that individual,
culled from public records, including addresses and Social Security
numbers. "Westlaw's service could be entitled 'Identity Theft for
Dummies,'" Schumer said. "To my mind, what bank robbery was
to the Depression era, identity theft is to the information age.
Everyone's susceptible." In a written statement, Thomson West, the
firm that operates Westlaw, said it shares Schumer's concerns about
privacy and identity theft. But the company denied the senator's claims
that it has been unresponsive to his inquiries. Schumer said
comprehensive legislation is needed in an area that is largely
unregulated at the federal level and governed by a patchwork of
sometimes-conflicting state laws. — Jonathan Krim, The
Washington Post. Click here to read the entire article.
Minding the Cost of
Boston's Big Dig
Keeping the price tag at $14.6 billion on what is already among
the most expensive public works projects in U.S. history may not seem
like a very ambitious goal. But in the nearly two-decade history of
Boston's Big Dig and its unparalleled list of missed deadlines, cost
overruns and, most recently, leaky tunnels in need of repair, simply
holding the line would be a first. The buck—and, he hopes, the
bucks—now stop with Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F.
Reilly, who in February took over efforts to recover state and federal
funds allegedly misspent and mismanaged by the massive highway
project's dozens of contractors. Reilly is circumspect on which
contractors he is planning to target, how much he thinks he can recover
and when he might produce results. Because Congress has contributed
about $8.5 billion to the Big Dig—which buried Boston's Central
Artery, a section of Interstate 93—just less than two-thirds of
the money Reilly recovers will be returned to the federal government.
The project was initially budgeted at about $2.5 billion and scheduled
to finish years ago. "It won't be billions [that are recovered],
but we will be more efficient," he said. "But we would
consider it an important accomplishment if we hold the bottom line
right where it is, at $14.6 billion." — Jonathan Finer,
The Washington Post.
Click here to read the entire article.
MSPB Reports on
Managing Federal Recruitment
The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has issued a report on
managing federal recruiting, concluding that while the government can
successfully compete for talent, it has to be “proactive and
creative” in its approach. The report explores the practices
agencies use to recruit a highly qualified, diverse work force;
presents recommendations for agencies to consider in developing and
improving recruitment programs; and provides illustrations of how some
agencies have used these approaches to address their recruitment
challenges. —FedWeek.
Click here for more information.
 Comments
Due on GASB's Proposal, Accounting for Termination Benefits
The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is
requesting comments by March 11 on proposals made in the Exposure
Draft, Accounting for Termination Benefits, which was released
in December. The proposed Statement would provide accounting guidance
for state and local governmental employers regarding benefits provided
to employees who terminate employment. The proposed Statement would
require employers to recognize, in financial statements prepared on the
accrual basis of accounting, the cost of voluntary termination benefits
when the offer is accepted and the cost of involuntary termination
benefits when a plan of termination has been approved and communicated
to the employees. In addition, the proposal would establish measurement
and disclosure requirements for termination benefits. The proposed
standard is scheduled to become effective in two parts. For termination
benefits provided through an existing defined benefit OPEB plan, the
provisions of the proposed Statement would be required to be
implemented simultaneously with the requirements of Statement No. 45,
Accounting and Financial Reporting by Employers for Postemployment
Benefits Other Than Pensions. For all other termination benefits,
the proposed Statement would be effective for financial statements for
periods beginning after June 15, 2005. Download the Exposure Draft from
the GASB website or call
800.748.0659 for a printed copy. The deadline for submitting comments
is March 11, 2005.
AGA
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information you need to run your ad! Or, you can contact
AGA's Director of Communications,
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Force. |
