Finance

Reducing Ignorance in Local Government Finance

February 5, 2014 Bond Rating

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Budgeting for the Future: Fiscal Planning Tools Can Show the Way (PDF), by Elizabeth C McNichol, Vincent Palacios, and Nicholas Johnson. Ten tools: Multi-Year Forecasts of Revenues and Spending Fiscal Notes with Multi-Year Projections Current Services Baselines Independent Consensus Revenue Forecasts Independent Legislative Fiscal Agencies Independent Review […]

Read the full article →

“Prioritizing” Federal Payments?

October 16, 2013 Cash

During the depth of the recent Great Recession, senior Budget and Finance staff would gather in my office once a week to decide which vendors our county would pay that week and which would not. We knew our cash position and which checks had been printed and held. While we had some idea of expected […]

Read the full article →

Keeping Watch for Local Government Fiscal Stress

December 2, 2012 Accounting

New York’s Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli has issued a draft proposal for identifying local governments at risk of fiscal stress. An earlier report touches on local fiscal distress. And here, former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky discusses the earlier Comptroller’s report. It’s a good idea, and given the local governments that have already gotten themselves in trouble the […]

Read the full article →

Part of the Cost of Government is Wall Street Scam

June 23, 2012 Bonds

Buried deep within the structures of public finance is the cash for capital projects that has not yet been spent because projects take time. This cash sits in accounts that earn interest. And the interest paid is determined by auctions. But many of these auctions are rigged. Matt Taibbi, of Rolling Stone, covers a trial […]

Read the full article →

Happiness is a Positive Cash Flow. What’s the Cost of Ignorance?

April 23, 2012 Cash

Unhappiness is a negative cash flow. Even worse is not knowing what your cash position is. For the past year, I’ve been submitting Freedom of Information (FOIL) requests to Albany County, getting their cash position each week. I’ve been using the data to prototype some displays of public data. It’s not cash flow, but rather […]

Read the full article →

Interest Costs. Just a Reminder

March 20, 2012 Capital

If you have ever had a mortgage to pay, you know painfully well how much you pay in interest costs over the life of the mortgage. With interest, total acquisition costs often come close to doubling the purchase price. A new Albany County Nursing Home project (by their own numbers) will require borrowing $70.842 million. […]

Read the full article →

Dancing Along the Edge – In the Dark

February 9, 2012 Accounting

Dance too close to the edge … Well you know what happens. When things are tight is when to be most careful, but wanting to avoid public acknowledgement of trouble, some public officials get closer to the edge and then topple over. It’s even worse, when public officials avoid the bad news and operate in […]

Read the full article →

Yes, Rockland County is in Trouble

December 9, 2011 Budget

Yesterday, after taking a quick look at the budget numbers and actions for 2012, I asked the question, is Rockland County (NY) in trouble? The answer is yes. This morning, the NYS Comptroller released the following (the emphases are mine): DiNAPOLI: POOR BUDGET PRACTICES HURTING ROCKLAND COUNTY County Has Incurred Large Debt and General Fund […]

Read the full article →

Genesse County, NY Budget History

December 7, 2011 Budget

Going back to 1991, Genesee County, NY has a nice history of its key overall budget figures here. In Firefox, the table runs off the side of the browser page, but it works fine in the latest versions of Chrome and Safari. I didn’t check it with Internet Explorer. In any case, it’s readable. It […]

Read the full article →

Intergovernmental Money Movement, Especially Downhill

November 29, 2011 Budget

Little considered or included in public discussions of property tax caps, or limitations on governmental expenditures are intergovernmental financial relationships. This is not merely a matter of mandates but recognition that very large sums of money flow back and forth between all levels of government. What is expenditure for one level of government is often […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries