GFOA of the US & Canada

Announcing

Annual Conference

View this year's conference sessions

Click here to visit GFOA's annual conference page and to register for the conference

Pension Guide Book and Funding Guidance for Elected Officials

The GFOA and other leading organizations representing state and local governments and retirement systems, working together as part of a Pension Funding Task Force in Washington, D.C., released their final report, Pension Funding: A Guide for Elected Officials. The guide, which GFOA members are encouraged to share with their elected officials and other decision makers, provides an overview of defined benefit pension plans, including how such plans are funded and the new standards issued by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.

Get Engaged – Help Protect the Muni Tax Exemption!

As Congress and the White House develop new budget deficit reduction and tax reform proposals, the tax exemption on municipal bond interest remains a target of our federally elected leaders. GFOA’s Federal Liaison Center has developed a draft letter, a draft resolution and talking points for our members to share with your elected leaders in reaching out to your congressional delegations and Senators. We urge you to work with your state and local elected leaders to contact your members of Congress and Senators today to ask them to preserve the this important financing tool. GFOA continues to be active in working with our state and local government association partners to defend the tax exemption. On March 8 GFOA, along with the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties and others, sent a letter up to the House and Senate Budget Committees urging their support for preserving the exemption.

Report Details Tax Exemption Elimination and Cap Impacts

On February 27, 2013, GFOA President-Elect Tim Firestine participated in a press conference with the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Association of Counties, and National League of Cities to announce a new report – a joint effort by the four groups – that details the importance of maintaining the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds.

The GFOA's Executive Board approved five new best practices. These best practices:

help governments develop policies in order to ensure a structurally balanced budget.
recommend governments that directly provide services to its citizens, develop a system to assign pricing for these services.
discuss how to establish processes and policies for effective grant management.
recommend that governments offering defined pension plans adopt a funding policy to ensure the costs of pension benefits are funded in an equitable and sustainable manner, and which commits to funding the full amount of the actuarially determined contribution each period.
help governments issuing debt understand the fees charged in a bond transaction.

For more information, click here

Congressional Efforts Underway to Reintroduce Onerous Pension Reporting Legislation

On February 25, 2013, Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) indicated his intention to reintroduce his proposed “Public Employee Pension Transparency Act,” and he circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter to his fellow House members, seeking their co-sponsorship. Past versions of the PEPTA legislation have challenged the validity of current state and local accounting rules and practices and would have mandated inappropriate federal reporting requirements on state and local governments regarding their pension costs. The newly introduced bill will likely be identical to the PEPTA legislation that Rep. Nunes sponsored in the last Congress. GFOA members are encouraged to contact their Congressional representatives as soon as possible to urge them not to co-sponsor this harmful and unnecessary federal regulation of public pension plans.

Click here for more information.

Check Out the GFOA’s Model for Self-Assessment of the Finance Function

How effective is your jurisdiction's financial management? The CIPFA GFOA FM Model can help you find out. This powerful tool, created by the GFOA's U.K. counterpart, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, and customized for U.S. and Canadian governments by the GFOA, will help your organization achieve high performance in financial management.

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Redmond, Washington, Assesses Its Financial Management Capabilities

GFOA White Paper Defines Zero-Base Budgeting in Current Practice

Zero-base budgeting (ZBB) is a budgeting process that asks managers to build a budget from the ground up, starting from zero. However, ZBB has been the subject of some controversy over the years, owing primarily to questions about the value ZBB analysis provides, in light of the costs incurred to putting ZBB into practice.

The goal of this paper is to define what ZBB means in current practice, describe the uses of ZBB, help public officials have a conversation in their organizations about the value of ZBB, and explore the important alternatives to ZBB.

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GFOA White Paper Gives Tips for Containing Health Care Costs The cost of employee health-care benefits has increased rapidly over recent years, contributing to the budgetary stress that governments are already facing as a result of declining or stagnant revenues and escalating costs in other areas.
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GFOA Provides Online Resource for Jurisdictions Recovering from Financial Distress

The GFOA’s recently released online resource was designed to help public officials cope with budgetary difficulties and ultimately improve the financial health of their governments.