The Board of Fire Commissioners is responsible for the general management and control of fire district finances. An important aspect of this responsibility is to provide a process to routinely monitor and review the work performed by those who handle moneys as part of their fire district duties. Oversight becomes particularly important in operations that do not have adequate segregation of duties. If one person, such as the treasurer, performs nearly all financial duties (e.g., receives and disburses cash, maintains the accounting records and performs reconciliations), it may weaken control over your fire district’s financial operations.

This bulletin highlights changes to fire district accounting and reporting requirements, and clarifies the new auditing requirements.

This study presents an analysis of our municipalities—cities, towns and villages—including a statistical regrouping that suggests what a modern classification system might look like if we started from scratch today, based on current conditions.

Section 10 of the New York State General Municipal Law was amended in 2005 to authorize an additional option for local governments to secure deposits and temporary investment of public funds. Under the new law, local governments have the option to accept as security a pledge of a pro rata portion of a "pool" of eligible securities. Local governments that choose to utilize the new pooled collateral option must take necessary steps to ensure that their deposits and investment are properly secure.

This bulletin highlights accounting and budgeting changes for counties who share their own sales tax revenues with other local governments within their boundaries. These changes are necessitated by the recent Statements from the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB).

This bulletin highlights the Medicare Part D Federal prescription drug benefits program and provides appropriate accounting guidance for Federal subsidies received under this program.

This report supplies context for the current policy discussion on Industrial Development Agencies (IDAs), details major process and accountability issues, describes efforts by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) to improve reporting quality and provides a summary of statistical and financial information from 2004 IDA annual reports.

This research brief summarizes issues associated with the property tax, provides an overview of recent trends and analyzes the tax burden across regions and types of local government.

This research brief measures fiscal stress in cities and includes an overall fiscal profile of each city in the State (except New York City). Of the 61 cities examined, 13 exhibited one or more indicators of severe fiscal stress. The most severely affected cities exhibited stress across multiple factors. Many cities appear to be on the verge of more widespread fiscal difficulties.

Across the State, growing medicaid costs continue to place significant pressure on local fiscal conditions. See related: 2006 County by County data [pdf]

These guidelines provide a framework and offer guidance that boards of education can use for establishing an audit committee charter. A sample charter is provided at the end of this guidance. This sample charter does not include all activities that might be appropriate to a particular audit committee, nor will all activities identified in this sample charter be relevant to every committee.

A new law was enacted (Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2005) to "cap" county Medicaid costs at calendar 2005 levels and limit growth rates to 3.5 percent in 2006 and 3.25 percent in 2007.

While many local governments are in stable financial condition, many are not—particularly upstate urban communities, where population losses and economic decline are eroding their ability to support basic governmental functions. As this report describes, there are very different underlying conditions facing municipalities depending on geography (upstate or downstate) and type of community (city versus suburb).

The “Big Five” cities of New York City, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers either are, or have recently been, fiscally distressed. This affects their dependent school systems, which already face significant challenges associated with the socio-economic composition of their students and the age of their facilities.

Across the State, growing Medicaid costs continue to place significant pressure on local fiscal conditions. With most counties already seeking or receiving State legislative approval to increase their sales tax rates to 4 percent or more, and some dangerously close to exhausting their property tax margins, counties are being challenged to effectively deal with rising Medicaid costs.

Unrestricted aid to local governments – known as revenue sharing – is State aid that can be used for any local government purpose. The intended goal is to redistribute tax dollars broadly to municipalities which do not have the tax base or taxing authority to generate this revenue on their own.

This research brief— focusing mainly on demographic trends—is the first of a series that will examine major issues facing local governments in New York State.

The purpose of this bulletin is to amend our January 2001 bulletin entitled ‘Tobacco Settlement Payments’ based upon the release of GASB Technical Bulletin No. 2004-1 ‘Tobacco Settlement Recognition and Financial Reporting Entity Issues.’

This annual report highlights major issues facing local governments, building upon the studies and audits from the Division, which are increasingly directed at issues of statewide or regional concern, such as smart growth or the empire zones program.

The purpose of this bulletin is to inform local government officials of the establishment of new revenue and appropriation codes to account for and report homeland security aid and related expenditures.