Local governments

Local governments have the ability to specify a name brand during their procurement process.

Washington's state and local governments regularly undergo a wide variety of audits with differing objectives.

Does it seem like there's always some new accounting standard that needs to be implemented? That's because there is! The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) issues an average of three new accounting standards a year.

Accounting for capital assets is an area of difficulty for many governments. General purpose governments have been reporting infrastructure assets for more than a decade because of Governmental Accounting Standard's Board (GASB) Statement No. 34. This pronouncement required the reporting of many more assets than had been previously reported, including some with their own unique challenges such as roads.

The State Auditor's Office has established a new OPEB web page to help local governments understand and implement GASB Statement No.

We are offering the BARS Roundtable Sessions again this fall. The roundtable discussions are free, three-hour feedback opportunities open to all local governments.

This week, our Office notified local governments across Washington of a modest adjustment to our hourly billing rate that begins next year.

From our friends at MRSC: Mike Kaser, IS Director for the City of Mercer Island, weighs in on protecting local governments from cyber attack. You can read the original here.

(Repost from MRSC's blog. Original available here.)

By Toni Nelson, MRSC

Since the original issuance of Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement 34 in 1999, the Office of the Washington State Auditor has found the resulting financial statement presentations to be unnecessarily complex, less timely and more costly for state and local governments to prepare and have audited. These presentations are also more challenging to understand.