Local governments

The Department of Retirement Systems's (DRS) 2021 Participating Employer Financial Information (PEFI) report showed that six out of eight state-sponsored pension plans are fully funded. While this means that these plans are in a better position to provide pension benefits to employees who are enrolled in them, it also means that many more governments will be reporting a net pension asset this year instead of a net pension liability.

Every local government in Washington is legally required to submit an annual financial report to the State Auditor's Office. In turn, SAO is legally required to publish the data from that annual report and make it available to the public. We do this through our online Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT).

Every quarter, we publish an updated snapshot-in-time of the financial data SAO has, which ensures that FIT contains the most recent data for every local government that successfully filed a report.

Budgeting and planning season is here for local governments that have a Dec. 31 fiscal year-end. With 2022 on the horizon, some governments might be anticipating increases to certain revenues or planning changes to salaries and benefits. Our Financial Intelligence Tool's (FIT) “Add Projection” feature allows governments to adjust their known or anticipated revenues and expenditures, and then project those amounts into the future. Continue reading to learn how to access this feature and start projecting today.

How to create a projection

While every financial system's internal controls are important, establishing strong controls for your government's accounts payable process is particularly critical for preventing errors and deterring or quickly detecting fraud. From maintaining master vendor files to preventing duplicate payments and transactions, accounts payable requires a robust set of internal controls for ensuring your government safeguards public resources.

This is the fifth article of our seven-part K&P leadership series. Missed the previous article on enabling others to act? Read it here.

2020 was anything but normal, and we can look at the annual reports that Washington's cities and towns recently submitted to see how the COVID-19 pandemic affected their operations. How did the pandemic affect sales tax collections? How did federal funding support our cities and towns as they navigated the economic challenges of the pandemic?

Strengthening your government's guard against the threats that compromised passwords pose is a necessary control for decreasing the risk of unauthorized users gaining access to your computers, network or database. In this post, we explain how passwords get compromised and how multi-factor authentication (MFA) can help governments improve their account security to better protect their systems.

How passwords get compromised

With new annual report filings from nearly 200 governments across the state since June 30, we're excited to share our first quarterly update of the 2020 fiscal year financial data in the Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT).

This is the fourth article of our seven-part K&P leadership series. Missed the previous article on challenging the process? Read it here.

Smaller governments frequently procure goods and services without a procurement manager. While smaller governments can get by without designated procurement managers for their daily operations, they occasionally take on larger projects like new building construction that can strain their limited resources. The burden of managing these projects often falls to managers who have several other duties or lack procurement expertise. Whether you have small or large procurements, here are five survival tips to help you navigate the procurement process: