Top 10 Most-Viewed GFR Articles of 2023

Budget decisions today are often made in an environment of high conflict and low trust. This is not surprising given that conflict is up, and trust is down in the United States, generally. The share of people who think that most other people can be trusted has declined in the U.S. by about one-quarter over the past few decades. This has real consequences. Seven in ten Americans think low trust between fellow citizens makes it harder to solve problems.

A public budget is a means of communicating community priorities and a plan for guiding public administrators in executing discretionary decision-making and undertaking practical means for getting results.

While a certain amount of turnover is healthy and normal, when an employer hemorrhages staff, it can take years to recover. And let’s face it, retention is tough in many places. While you can’t make people stay, you can take some critical actions to address the main reasons people say sayonara, so long, and see you later.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for decades as another name for automation. It has aided the medical industry, the vehicle industry, and aviation industry, just to name a few. Largely based on complex algorithms, the technology was usually piloted by those in science and academics and used in their research.

A report from GFOA and Lightcast, “Meeting Demand for State and Local Government Finance Jobs,” demonstrates that demand for state and local public finance officers is outstripping the current supply of workers in the sector and that increasing the pace of hiring and the breadth of recruitment will be necessary to reverse the growing gap between supply and demand.

Grants are an important source of revenue for many governments and allow investments in infrastructure, development of programs, and results for the community that otherwise would not be possible using local sources alone.

As is the case for many local governments, the City of Dubuque, Iowa, has faced serious staffing challenges over the last three years. The combination of a year-long COVID-19 hiring freeze, increased attrition, and a particularly tight labor market have forced city officials to get creative as they try to work their way back to pre-pandemic staffing levels without decreasing the quality of their services.

Common wisdom has it that people aren’t attracted to jobs in the public sector for the pay—but compensation appears to be a fundamental problem in hanging onto personnel. According to a 2022 MissionSquare Research Institute survey, 51 percent of human resource professionals in local and state government said exit surveys revealed that uncompetitive compensation was among employees’ top three reasons for leaving.

While Fund Balance Guidelines for the General Fund is one of GFOA’s most often-cited best practices, there are many opportunities for reserve optimization beyond the one-size-fits-all guidance provided in the best practice. This series of articles brings what we’ve learned together with university research to describe new opportunities that will help local governments get the best value from their reserve strategies.

The authoritative accounting guidance in Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement No. 96,Subscription-Based Information Technology Arrangements(GASB 96), is effective for fiscal years beginning after June 15, 2022, and all reporting periods thereafter. But for SBITAs, there is arguably more complexity to measurement of subscription assets than there is for lease assets, as certain development costs are included.