Winter committee meeting update. (Profiling GFOA).(Brief Article)

Spring-like weather greeted members of GFOA's five standing committees as they convened in Washington, D.C., for the annual Winter Meeting. During the two-day event held January 29-30, committee members addressed a number of policy issues affecting state and local governments, and had the opportunity to interact with their federal government colleagues. This year, the Winter Meeting coincided with President George W. Bush's first State of the Union address. The president focused his remarks and his 2002 agenda on the fight against terrorism and his administration's efforts to enhance homeland security and reinvigorate the national economy. A day after 52 million Americans heard the president's address, GFOA committee members were honored by an analysis of the president's remarks by E.J. Dionne, Jr., a columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Dionne began his keynote remarks by lauding the work of government finance officers. As a journalist, he acknowledged that his profession depends on treasurers, finance directors, budget managers, and other government professionals to translate complex government policies into everyday language. He emphasized that as policymakers react to war and recession by enacting new spending and structural reforms, it will fall upon GFOA members to perform the hard work of government--balancing budgets, managing investments, and funding new activities.

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks Dionne said the 2000 election wounds were largely forgotten and the emergence of bipartisanship was genuine. The American people, though still wary of war and recession, believed that the country-united as it was in response to the attacks--was largely on the right track. The President recognized this optimism in his State of the Union address. "As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers," he said. "Yet the state of our union has never been stronger.

Dionne said President Bush rallied the nation behind a commitment to not walk away from the battlefield. "Whatever it costs to defend our country," he said, "we will pay it." (2) But Dionne was critical of the president's speech in this regard, arguing that the president refused to ask the country to pay for the war on terrorism. On the contrary, President Bush proposed additional tax cuts in the face of massive new spending. The shame of this, he noted, is that for the first time since the Vietnam War, a broad consensus exists across the lines of party and ideology on the need to pay the military costs of reaching important foreign policy goals. Most of the president's domestic political opponents cheer his handling of the terrorist challenge. But they think the bill for his policies should be paid now and not imposed on the next generation. In making this point, Dionne noted that GFOA members do not have the luxury of fiscal imbalance.

Committee Meeting Summaries

Committee on Accounting, Auditing, and Financial Reporting. The Committee on Accounting, Auditing and Financial Reporting had a very productive Winter Meeting, approving three new recommended practices and discussing a number of other important GFOA initiatives. The committee approved recommended practices on documenting accounting policies and procedures, estimating the useful lives of capital assets, and maintaining appropriate levels of unreserved general fund balance. All of these recommended practices are now available on GFOA's Web site at www.gfoa.org, along with a new public policy statement on the GASB's involvement in performance measurement. Both the policy statement and the recommended practice on fund balance were written in collaboration with the Committee on Governmental Budgeting and Management. During the two-day meeting, the CAAFR committee also discussed GFOA's financial indicators initiative, a forthcoming manual on accounting policies and procedures, and a joint project on internal contro ls between the committee and the Technology Resource Group.

Committee on Cash Management. The Committee on Cash Management got "back to basics" at the Winter Meeting. Given the current economic environment, the committee wants to encourage members to stick to their strategies and recommended practices. In light of this goal, the committee has an aggressive list of recommended practices to review and/or update before the annual conference in June. Additionally, several articles, a survey, and an investment manual are in progress on ...