Highlights
CPE Opportunities
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in San Diego!
Make plans now to attend AGA’s 55th Annual
Professional Development Conference & Exposition (PDC). With the theme
“Navigating the Way to Citizen-Centered Government,” the PDC will
provide technical training, emerging trend snapshots and leadership
secrets from the best in the business. Register today and secure your
place at the government financial management education event of the
year!
• Register online
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registration form to send by fax/mail (Adobe PDF)
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website
Audio Conference Scheduled for June 14
Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)
Statement No. 44, Economic Condition Reporting: The Statistical
Section—an amendment of NCGA Statement 1, is the subject of an
audio conference scheduled for June 14.
NASACT, in conjunction with AGA, N.A.L.G.A. and the
National Association of College and University Business Officers, is
pleased to announce the latest in its series of audio conferences
addressing timely issues in government financial management.
The topic for this audio conference, GASB Statement
No. 44, is the first update in 25 years of the standards guiding the
preparation of the statistical section of a CAFR. Join us Wednesday,
June 14, from 2 – 3:50 p.m., EDT. Speakers are
Dean Mead, GASB Project Manager; Eric Berman,
Deputy Comptroller, Commonwealth of Massachusetts;
Anne Fritz, Finance Manager, Westlake, Ohio; representative
from the National Association of College and University Business
Officers (for the higher education perspective); and
Dan Bonnette, Deloitte.
Visit the NASACT website for
registration information.
Interested in the CGFM Certification?
Sign up for AGA's special Intensive Review Course and
take the CGFM Examinations in June in San Diego. Don't miss this opportunity
to earn your CGFM!
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May 22, 2006 •
News from the Profession
AGA Today is Brought to You by AGA Corporate
Partner Clifton Gunderson
 Clifton Gunderson's
DC office is 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 Jennifer.Busse@cliftoncpa.com
Managers Get Advice on Meeting
New Financial Reporting Rule
As a June 30 Office of Management and Budget deadline approaches for
agencies to issue assurances of their internal controls over financial
reporting, experts have different ideas on how to secure immediate and
long-term compliance. At a recent breakfast for
members of the federal financial community, government and industry
panelists made various recommendations for meeting the deadline, which
is set in OMB's Circular A-123. These ranged from implementing
information technology systems to winning buy-in from top management.
"Documentation is the backbone, and the biggest pain point" in
compliance, said McNamara Curtis, president and chief executive officer
of Arlington, Va.-based Pearson Government Solutions. Curtis said
automatic updates to documentation are the key to avoiding overwhelming
paperwork, noting that his company's latest compliance papers stack up
to four and a half feet. —Jenny Mandel,
Government Executive. Read the entire article.
Senators Want Answers from
Tax-Prep Chains
Several U.S. tax-preparation firms have received a letter asking them to
detail how they train and compensate their tax preparers, the Wall
Street Journal reports. The six-page letter, signed by Senate Finance
Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT),
was sent to 10 tax preparation firms. The companies were not identified
for the press. According to the newspaper, the letter said that a
government report published last month, which outlined errors and even
cheating by national tax-prep firms, raised "serious concerns" about the
accuracy and quality of tax returns by tax preparers at these firms. In
addition to operations, the letter also asked for the firm's policy on
the use of or disclosure of clients' tax-return information. The
senators are sponsors of a bill that would require examinations for and
impose continuing education requirements on any person who prepares
federal income tax returns, and would give the Internal Revenue Service
authority to regulate all paid income tax preparers. —SmartPros. Read the entire article.
AGA Today is Brought to You by AGA Corporate Partner
Improving your performance to improve your
organization’s results.
The Graduate School, USDA provides professional
training and educational services to auditors and financial managers in
all levels of government. We offer a wide range of studies in
accounting, budgeting, financial management and performance auditing, as
well as customized development services to help you create training that
meets your organization’s unique needs.
For more information on our Financial Management
curriculum, the Government Audit Training Institute, and our other
courses and services, call 888.744.GRAD or visit us on the Web at
www.grad.usda.gov.
Audit Slams San Francisco
Emergency Planning Office
The city office responsible for planning and coordinating emergency
preparation and response in San Francisco has quadrupled in size and
grown management-heavy since two years ago, when Mayor Gavin Newsom
appointed a new director, the Board of Supervisors' budget analyst found
during a monthslong audit of how the agency is run. Since Newsom named
Annemarie Conroy to take over the Office of Emergency Services, the
agency has managed more than $82 million in federal and state Homeland
Security grants—and most of its spending has been directed at increasing
the size of Conroy's staff from six to 25 full-time positions. The
highly critical 172-page report of the audit findings says the hiring
resulted in a work force with an "unacceptable" 40 percent of staff
designated as management while comparatively little of the money was put
into emergency training. —Charlie Goodyear, Cecilia M. Vega, San
Francisco Chronicle. Read the entire article.
Federal Accounting Corner:
Reporting Allowance for Loss on Accounts Receivable
Eliminating Interagency Receivables
In order to eliminate the effects of transactions between federal
agencies for the governmentwide financial statements, Treasury's
Financial Management Service (FMS) requires that trial balances
submitted to them (through FACTS I and FACTS II) include information on
the trading partner for receivables, payables, reimbursements,
expenditures, revenues and expenses. Included in these accounts are all
receivable accounts (those that begin with 13) except 1399 Allowance for
Subsidy. It also includes some of the budgetary receivable accounts,
such as 4251 Reimbursements and Other Income Earned - Receivable.
—Simcha Kuritzky, CGFM, CPA. Read the entire column.
AGA Today is Brought to You by
 Federal Contract Management Master Certificate program
starts June 11.
Provided through eTraining Solutions Distance Learning from the
University of Alabama in Huntsville Professional Development. Learn to
understand the government procurement system including proposal
preparation, negotiation, legalities, and financial issues. Boost your
confidence in dealing with the complex and newest issues in the world of
government contracting. For detailed program information visit www.e-trainingsolutions.net
or email ann@e-trainingsolutions.net</ a>.
Standard & Poor's Lifts Calif.
From Bottom of Ratings Barrel
California no longer has the lowest
credit rating of any state, thanks to a modest upgrade announced May 17
by Standard & Poor's because of a $7.5 billion state tax revenue
windfall from a strong economy. Standard & Poor's moved California up
one notch from “A” to “A+” with a stable outlook, putting the Golden
State ahead of hurricane-ravaged Louisiana but still below the other 48
states. The rating agency said the state budget proposed by Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger uses much of the temporary windfall, believed to be
mainly from stock market and housing-sale gains, for things that do not
increase permanent spending. But even with surging revenue, the budget
still does not completely close a chronic operating deficit, now in its
sixth year. The budget gap has shrunk from $16.4 billion three years ago
to $2.5 billion in the proposed $101 billion general fund. —Ed Mendel,
San Diego News Tribune. Read the entire article.
States Look to Massachusetts
for Health Plan Model
Massachusetts’ new push to ensure that
every resident has health insurance is gaining national attention as
states take the lead in exploring ways to cover the 46 million uninsured
Americans. The plan to require every resident to obtain health insurance
by July 2007 and to penalize employers that don’t provide coverage takes
advantage of Massachusetts’ unique financial arrangements and low rate
of uninsured. But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers from Rhode Island,
California, Louisiana and Maryland from considering using parts of the
Bay State’s approach back home. Enacted last month, the Massachusetts
law is the first in the country to require that every person have health
insurance, in the same way states routinely require drivers to have auto
insurance. But Massachusetts is only one of several states experimenting
with ways to combat the rising number of uninsured while Congress has
made little headway addressing the issue. —Daniel C. Vock,
Stateline.org. Read the entire article.
GASB Issues Proposal
for Reporting Derivatives
 The Governmental
Accounting Standards Board (GASB) has issued a Preliminary Views (PV)
document, Accounting and Financial Reporting for Derivatives,
which proposes to report derivatives in the financial statements at
their fair value. Annual changes in fair value would be reported in
investment income, unless a derivative is effectively hedging (reducing)
the risk it was entered into to address. In that case, changes in fair
value would be deferred until the derivative concludes or becomes
ineffective. The PV describes the acceptable methods for assessing
effectiveness and the parameters within which a derivative would be
considered effective for financial reporting purposes. The GASB also is
proposing to improve the note disclosures relating to derivatives.
The PV can be downloaded free from the GASB
website. The site also contains additional
information about the GASB’s derivatives proposal, including:
The GASB will be conducting a public hearing in
conjunction with AGA's Professional Development Conference & Exposition
in San Diego on June 21. Panel discussions featuring persons with
varying perspectives (such as a financial statement preparer, auditor,
and user) will be held July 10 in New York City; a traditional public
hearing format may be available on that date if time permits. The GASB
has also made it possible for the first time to submit comments through
an Internet comment form. Directions for submitting comments and
participating in the public hearing and panels can be found in the PV.
The deadline for submitting comments is July 28.
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