GASB Statement No. 49, Accounting and Financial Reporting for Pollution Remediation Obligations. This statement explains when a government would be required to report a liability in its financial statements related to cleaning up pollution or contamination. The statement also establishes a probability weighted method that a government would be required to use to determine the estimated amount of pollution obligation liabilities that would be reported in its financial statements.

The purpose of this report is to help shed light on how town special improvement districts are structured, how they operate, and what fiscal burden they impose on property owners.

Many school districts throughout the state have made considerable improvements to their financial controls over the last year. There are still opportunities for school districts to improve financial operations, and we continue to find occasional instances of serious problems and potential fraud. This report identifies additional opportunities for school districts to improve controls over information technology, employee benefit payments, claims auditing, no-bid contracts, capital assets and segregating duties.

This research brief analyzed multiyear financial plans submitted by cities under a new State requirement. The Comptroller's analysis looks at 48 of these plans, excluding New York City. The report notes that quality of these plans varied greatly and urges the State to adopt a formal review and approval process of the plans, as well as more training for city officials.

Highlighted within this report are some of the major fiscal trends in New York’s local governments and recent policy developments that affect their operations and financial health. This report helps illustrate the complex and changing environment in which local governments must operate, and the delicate balance local officials must achieve between service delivery and fiscal responsibility.

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.

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.

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

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.