The Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) went into effect May 7, 2019, creating a new Chapter under Title 19 RCW and amending other state laws. The Act places new requirements on electric utilities to transition over time to clean energy resources to supply their retail customers. It also prescribes penalties for noncompliance with some requirements.
During the past year, you have worked hard with your team to keep existing services going and rolling out new services quickly. From reimagining service delivery to taking paper-based, internal processes on-line, 2020 was a year of non-stop change. In a recent survey published by Route Fifty, 72 percent of local government finance officials indicated that their team had taken on three or more new responsibilities as a result of the pandemic.
According to the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), it's a best practice for governments to formally adopt financial policies. We couldn't agree more. Financial policies create expectations for government operations, provide a foundation for making financial decisions and help ensure good financial management.
Here are the top 12 we consider essential:
Segregating duties is a best practice that protects against error and fraud, but it can be hard to do when you don't have enough people.
But fear not! Just because your government has a small staff does not mean it is impossible to implement this important internal control. It mostly depends on the decisions you make. Segregating duties is not an ‘all or nothing concept' – you can segregate responsibilities as much as you can and then fill in any gaps with oversight controls.
During the past year, you probably have made a lot of changes in your organization “on the fly.” The urgency of the pandemic meant some things weren't negotiable. Other changes in the external environment – regulations, economic conditions, community needs – have followed each other at a relentless pace. You likely had to make many decisions and probably convinced your team as “we have to do it this way for now.”
Spring is a time of renewal and energy, plants come alive and start to bloom, the green grasses grow, and the air has a fresh, clean scent. Spring is a great time to dust off the cobwebs of last year, and start afresh. If you've filed your annual report, then it's a good time to kick off some spring cleaning at your workplace.
Here are some ideas for you to consider:
Do you ever wonder if a key control can be a person? Maybe you have a long-standing employee that everyone goes to for answers, or perhaps an employee that really knows and understands a certain process. People are most certainly an important part of the control system, and governments benefit from these valuable employees that contribute so much.
As we operate in a more virtual and electronic environment, some of your control system documentation might go by the wayside. While less paper can be good, it's important to keep some evidence of your key controls in action.
What is a key control?
It's that time of year, local governments are busy finalizing their annual financial reports and filing them with our Office. There's a lot to remember and effective reviews are very important to ensure a quality product.
As you work to wrap up your reporting year, we want to remind you about resources you might find helpful. The resources covered in this article are specifically for governments preparing statements under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP).
With the pandemic, many governments have and will receive additional federal funding, such as the Cares Act. For some governments, this might mean going through a federal single audit for the first time.
A federal single audit is required when you spend more than $750,000 of federal funds in one year, regardless of whether those federally-sourced funds came directly from the federal government or were passed through from a state or local government.