Local governments

This is the final article of our seven-part K&P leadership series. Missed the previous articles in the series? Read them all here.

With the new year comes new annual report filings. Our second quarterly update of the 2020 fiscal year financial data in the Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT) includes more governments so you can see where public money comes from and where it goes.

The State Auditor's Office has finished updating the GAAP and

As we come to the end of 2021, we at SAO want to thank you for your commitment to accountability and transparency. We know it takes people like you, people who care and put in the effort, to make good government happen.

Do you remember the scene in the holiday classic “It's a Wonderful Life,” where George's Uncle Billy loses an $8,000 deposit and it nearly results in the ruin of the family's business? Absentminded Uncle Billy had somehow lost or misplaced the money on his way to the bank. In today's dollars, that deposit would be equivalent to about $96,000.

This is the sixth article of our seven-part K&P leadership series. Missed the previous article on encouraging the heart? Read it here.

Today marks the premiere of the Center for Government Innovation's limited series, “Fish Tank,” on SAO's Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages.

Governments that spend $750,000 or more in federal awards during their fiscal year must receive a Single Audit to determine their compliance with certain federal requirements. If your government has received a Single Audit—either annually or at some point in the past—you might have wondered how your auditor selected federal programs for audit.

In this bonus edition of our FIT Data Stories series on COVID-19's effect on our cities and towns' revenues, we use our Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT) to take a deep dive into how the pandemic affected Washington's border towns and special districts. Scroll through our interactive infographic to get a better picture of the pandemic's financial effect on our state.

 

The influx of money from the Coronavirus Relief Fund (Assistance Listing 21.019) prompted many cities and counties to make more subawards than they have the past. Passing along federal money to others does not relieve governments of grant compliance requirements—in fact, it adds to them. The State Auditor's Office is seeing an increase in audit issues around subrecipient monitoring, primarily due to lack of awareness of the requirements.