Highlights
CPE
Opportunities
The AGA National Office will be closed Dec.
26
- Jan. 2. AGA's newsletters resume on Jan. 9. Happy Holidays from the
National Office Staff!
Register
Today for AGA's NLC
Join us in our nation’s capital
for the National Leadership Conference (NLC) set for February 2 –
3, 2006, in Washington, D.C., where the best minds from all levels of
government, the private sector and academia will discuss measuring
government performance. Learn how to best communicate your
program’s successes and shortfalls to citizens, policy-makers and
government leaders. Earn up to 14 CPE hours, share best practices,
connect with your peers and view the latest technologies, services and
products in the Exhibit Hall.
• Register online.
• Print registration form to send by fax/mail
(Adobe PDF).
• Visit the
conference website.
• Exhibit at NLC
2006.
March 1 Audio Conference on SOX, Auditing
AGA, in conjunction with the
National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers
(NASACT), and the National Association of Local Government Auditors
(N.A.L.G.A.), is offering this audio conference, worth 2 CPE hours, at
2-3:50 p.m. EST March 1. Speakers will cover the
status of audit and internal control efforts for state and local
governments and the possible effects of additional requirements. NASACT
Executive Director Kinney Poynter and Nancy A. Valley, CGFM, Partner
and National Industry Leader, KPMG LLP, will discuss these issues and
the results of a joint AGA/NASACT research project on this topic.
Click here for more information. If you have any
questions regarding registration, please contact Julie Cupp Questions regarding the
program should be directed to Raymond Harris, CGFM.
Interested in the CGFM Designation?
Sign up for AGA's special Intensive
Review Course and take the CGFM Examinations this February in
Washington, D.C. Don't miss this opportunity to earn your CGFM! Click here for
more information.
AGA Advertising
Opportunities!
Advertise in AGA's electronic
newsletters—TOPICS and AGA Today! Get maximum
exposure and build your brand. Click here for all the information you need to
run your ad! Or, you can contact AGA's Director of Communications,
Marie Force.
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December 19, 2005
• 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
Federal CFOs
Becoming Power Players
When Linda Morrison Combs accepted
the chief financial officer position at the Environmental Protection
Agency in 2001, she strolled into the building on Pennsylvania Avenue
with a curious goal: to make hers the most respected CFO operation in
government. Not the best, or the greenest on the President's Management
Agenda, but the most respected—however that played out. "One
was to get a clean audit opinion. So we did that. Another was to have
no material weaknesses. We did that," she ticks off the list.
Monitoring and correcting reportable conditions as diligently as
material weaknesses added prestige, so her team did that. The effort
propelled the EPA to the first green for a Cabinet-level agency on that
all-important score card—a model that eight of 24 agencies have
followed. "It was one of my proudest moments," Combs says.
"I didn't know exactly what it meant when I first articulated this
goal, but I knew if we kept working and refining what respectability
meant, we would get there." To borrow a phrase from NASA, it was
one small step for the EPA, one giant leap for federal CFOs. Success
catapulted Combs in June 2005 to become controller at the Office of
Management and Budget, her fifth presidential appointment confirmed by
the Senate. And the accolades helped elevate CFOs to an even more
powerful seat at the management table. —Julie Sturgeon,
Government Executive. Click here
to read the entire article.
Three Federal Agencies Earn Top
Management Awards
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
has announced the winners of the 2005 President's Quality Award, the
top management honor for executive branch agencies. Four awards were
granted for management excellence in three categories. OPM selected
winners from 47 submissions. The award for Overall Management went to
the Department of Labor in recognition of its effectiveness in
implementing the five components of the President's Management Agenda
(PMA): personnel reform, competitive sourcing, financial management,
electronic government and performance budgeting. Labor was the first
and has been the only agency to earn the highest
rating—"green"—in each category on the
administration's management score card. It earned praise for enhancing
performance through monthly departmental Management Review Board
meetings to discuss cross-cutting management issues, and for
establishing internal PMA score cards for its 15 agencies and
components. The Department of State earned the award for Innovative and
Exemplary Practices for the design and launch of its Employee Profile
Plus database, which enables managers to locate current and former
employees with skills in almost 300 specific areas. The award for
Agencywide Performance in a Governmentwide Management Initiative was
shared by State and the Social Security Administration, each of which
earned the honor in recognition of human capital efforts. — Jenny
Mandel, Government Executive. Click here to read the entire article.
All three agencies have received AGA's
Certificate of Excellence in Accountability Reporting. Click here
for more information.
Blanco Defends Louisiana Response
on Capitol Hill
Republican members of Congress on
Wednesday accused Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor
Ray Nagin of failing to evacuate the beleaguered city in time for
Hurricane Katrina. Appearing before a special House committee
established to investigate the hurricane response, the Democratic
governor engaged in often testy exchanges with committee members
accusing her of waiting too long to move people. "We got 1.2
million people evacuated, we saved another 100,000 and we lost 1,100;
that's the whole story," Blanco snapped. "We got people
out." But several members of the House Select Katrina Response
Committee weren't satisfied, saying that the 19-hour lead time was
insufficient. —Gerard Shields, The Baton Rouge Advocate. Click here to read the entire
article.
Congress Aims to Draw
Graduates to Government Service
Worried that too many young Americans are turned off by the idea
of working in government, Congress has provided $600,000 for a research
project to develop strategies to raise interest among college students
in federal service. The "Call to Service Recruitment
Initiative" will be run by OPM and the Partnership for Public
Service, according to the fiscal 2006 spending bill that covers OPM
operations. "The war for talent is a real one," Max Stier,
president of the partnership, said. "The public sector is losing
that war, and the consequences are going to become more severe."
The project will use surveys and other research efforts to test and
evaluate various methods of reaching out to college students and to
understand what messages or outreach activities might sway top-notch
graduates to seriously consider a federal job. Or, as Stier put it,
"Can we move the needle on students' interest in government as an
employer of first choice?" —Stephen Barr, The Washington
Post. Click here to read the entire article.
Wielding Florida's Huge Pension,
Leaders
Demand Corporate Reform
Fed up with "outrageous"
executive compensation and "undemocratic" proxy voting at
public companies, Gov. Jeb Bush and two other state leaders have
ordered Florida's public pension fund to take a leading role nationally
in pushing for corporate governance reform. Catching up to a corporate
corruption issue that has dogged big business for several years, the
Florida leaders want companies to adhere to higher standards to win the
state's investment dollars. One of the keys is linking a chief
executive's salary and benefits to the company's bottom line. They also
want companies to adopt majority-voting policies that make it easier
for stockholders to block a director's appointment to a corporate
board. "The one that angers me the most is the lack of tying of
executive compensation to results," Bush complained during a
trustees meeting recently. He later noted a Morgan Stanley executive
who won a buyout contract for $37-million for five months' work.
"It's just outrageous some of the salaries they get for poor
results," the governor said. As early as next year, Florida's
pension fund could adopt a "focus list" of companies deemed
to pay their executives too much or give shareholders too little say on
who serves on the board of directors. Coleman Stipanovich, the pension
fund's executive director, said companies on the focus list will have
to prove they're strong investments. —Joni James, The St.
Petersburg Times. Click here to read the entire article.
Enron's Ex-Chief
Calls Himself Victim of 'Wave of Terror'
The well known and the powerful often appear before the Houston
Forum, one of the city's elite spots for speakers. Senator John McCain,
Republican of Arizona, gave a recent talk, as did Michael Chertoff, the
homeland security secretary. But the speaker who stirred up the
greatest interest was one of Houston's own: Kenneth L. Lay, the former
chairman of Enron, who spoke on Dec. 13. It was a rare appearance for
Mr. Lay, and particularly noteworthy because he goes on trial next
month in Houston on criminal charges that could send him to prison for
decades. He used the opportunity to make his case before the crowd of
well-heeled Houstonians, forcefully proclaiming his innocence and
contending he was the victim of a "wave of terror," in a
speech invoking Scripture and the wisdom of Winston Churchill. "We
must create our own 'wave of truth,' " said Mr. Lay, 63. "I
believe the return to sanity has begun." He also said he planned
to testify at his trial, even while acknowledging that the tactic was
risky. "Others will be viewed more objective, more credible than I
will be," he said. He assigned the blame for Enron's collapse four
years ago to Andrew S. Fastow, then Enron's chief financial officer.
Mr. Fastow has pleaded guilty to fraud, has agreed to cooperate with
the government and faces 10 years in prison. —Simon Romero,
The New York Times. Click here to read the entire article.
DFAS Begins BRAC
Transformation
Site directors at each of the
Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) sites have been
conducting all-hands briefings to bring employees up to date on the
agency's approaching transformation including how DFAS will implement
the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure law. The reduction in the number
of operating sites will be reduced from 30 to 10. The continuing sites
will be: the Ft. Belvoir Liaison, Cleveland, Cleveland, Bratenahl,
Columbus, Europe, Indianapolis, Japan, Limestone, Rome and Texarkana.
"BRAC 2005 provides the opportunity to implement site
consolidations, streamline DFAS operations, and support our goal to
provide best value to the warfighter," said DFAS Director Zack
Gaddy. The transformation is scheduled to begin in January 2006,
implementing changes to DFAS's organization structure, including roll
out of High Performing Organization initiatives, establishing Centers
of Excellence and executing the National Security Personnel System, or
NSPS, in the near future. —DFAS.
GASB Offers
Guidance on Disaster-Related Finance Issues, Statement 44
Implementation Guide
The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) has
made an implementation guide available on Statement No. 44,
Economic Condition Reporting: The Statistical Section. Also,
GASB has offered resources and guidance for governments facing
disaster-related financial reporting issues. The GASB is also reminding
interested parties of a Dec. 30 deadline to comment on the Exposure
Draft, Sales and Pledges of Receivables and Future Revenues.
—GASB. Click here to read the entire GASB Update.
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