Communications Committee
Rebecca Pine, Certification Committee Chair
The Communications Committee is making progress on the Board’s goals. We have assigned committee member Tresa Petty-Edwards (pettyedwatm@gru.com) as the Communications Committee liaison for the Chapter Presidents and Darcy Eckert (deckert@co.pinellas.fl.us) as the Communications Committee liaison for the committee chairs. We are continuing to work on meeting our social media benchmarks including increasing the number of followers on Twitter to 250 and Facebook to 400. The strategies we are using are to follow like organizations, share and re-tweet posts from like organizations, tweet/post FGFOA Committee messages, tweet/post appropriate articles, and post FGFOA e-mails and messages to both Facebook and Twitter. We currently have 46 followers on twitter and 393 fans on Facebook. The committee would like to encourage all FGFOA members to share and promote FGFOA social media content on Chapter social media sites.
School of Governmental Finance Committee
Jennifer Desrosiers, SOGF Committee Chair
The 2017 School of Governmental Finance “Lifting Up Emerging Leaders” is off to the printers and the announcement will be coming out soon! I have been getting many inquiries, so be on the lookout within the next week or so for the registration and hotel information to be available on the FGFOA website. The SOGF team was very creative and has planned many unique sessions for your edification. We are very excited and hope you will be able to join us at the 2017 School of Governmental Finance at the Omni in Jacksonville Florida from October 23-27, 2017.
This is your school and we want your valuable input. We are always looking to attract new members to our committee to help provide the BEST program for our attendees. If you are one of those “go-getters” who want to help shape this important event, we want you to join our committee! Please contact next year’s Chair, Sharon Almeida at salmeida@lantana.org or, better yet, register for the committee kick-off meeting at the SOGF in October.
Watch for additional details and please make plans to join us at the 2017 School of Governmental Finance!
Technical Resources Committee
Melissa Burns, Committee Chair
The Technical Resources Committee has been busy during this past quarter, and have accomplished the following:
- Drafted and delivered a response to an exposure draft for Governmental Accounting Standards Board’s (GASB) Project 24-16ED, Implementation Guide No. 201X-Y; Implementation Guide Update 201X.
- Held the annual meeting for the Technical Resources Committee at the FGFOA Annual Conference in June.
- Prepared the presentation for the webinar on the Basic Government Resource Manual held on July 20th.
The next few months will be focused on:
- Will be preparing a response to an invitation to comment on the exposure draft – Implementation Guide No. 201X-Z, Accounting and Financial Reporting for Postemployment Benefits Other Than Pensions (And Certain Issues Related to OPEB Plan Reporting).
- A committee conference call will be held to review the drafted response to the exposure draft for Certain Disclosures Related to Debt – Reexamination of Statements 34, 38, and 62 and the submit to the board.
In related news, the GASB:
- In June, released Statement No. 87, Leases, which establishes a single approach for reporting leases. In overview, the new standard will generally require a lessee to recognize (1) an intangible asset representing the right to use the underlying nonfinancial leased asset and (2) a lease liability. A significant change from the previous guidance for leases is the simplification of the criteria to capitalize the lease, which creates two types of leases, short term versus long term based upon if the lease is 12 months or longer.
- Published for comment in July, the exposure draft - Implementation Guide No. 201X-Z, Accounting and Financial Reporting for Postemployment Benefits Other Than Pensions (And Certain Issues Related to OPEB Plan Reporting). The objective of the implementation guide is to provide guidance that clarifies, explains, or elaborates on the requirements of GASB Statement No. (GASBS) 75, Accounting and Financial Reporting for Postemployment Benefits Other Than Pensions, as amended, and GASBS 74, Financial Reporting for Postemployment Benefit Plans Other Than Pension Plans, as amended.
- Issued in July the exposure draft - Certain Disclosures Related to Debt, Including Direct Borrowings and Direct Placements - An Amendment of GASB Statement No. 34 and No. 38. The proposed Statement is intended to improve the information disclosed in the financial statement notes related to debt, including direct borrowings and direct placements and would clarify which liabilities should be included in the debt related disclosures.