I’ll bet if I looked back into the archive of old Updates, I’d find that I have
written about our organization’s  Comprehensive Annual Finance Report (CAFR) almost every year. If I haven’t, I know I’ve been tempted. 

In what has become a dynastic tradition, the CAFR has once again received a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA). This makes the 16th time!  In other words, for sixteen years in a row, this organization has beensingled out for national recognition for “excellence in financial reporting by state and local governments.”

If you want to be impressed, walk over to the Finance department in the Administration building to take a look at their “wall of fame” outside Pete Ballios’ office. Those plaques are awarded to the best.  We have 16.

What should be more impressive comes with the history of getting these CAFR reports done for the organization. As Pete Collinson will tell you, it wasn’t long ago that pulling together the numbers, the data and the analysis for the CAFR was a nearly year-long, full-time job for a very centralized group of people in Finance. By the time they were able to finish the report, a good 9 to 10 months after the end of the year, there was no time to digest or understand the report in order to use it for creating the next years’ budgets. One member of the Board of Commissioners back then referred to the CAFR as the County’s “obituary” because of how late it came before the Board.

This year, as they have for the last 9 years, the people in Finance were there to present the completed CAFR to the Board at the April 4th Ways & Means meeting last week.  Once more they completed the Report before March 31. (See the CAFR Powerpoint Presentation from that meeting.)

The shift in the way the Report is created took time, took vision and took the willingness of those involved to see a different, better reality.

At last week’s Board meeting, the two Petes (Finance director Pete Ballios and Accounting Manager Pete Collinson) offered several reasons why the change occurred and how excellence has been maintained.

• The resources that were needed to get the CAFR done in an accelerated timetable

• Seriously committed and excellent staff in Finance, as well as an extended group of people at the departmental level all over the County who don’t think of the work on the CAFR as “extra” – but as part of the way they do business

• Leadership and backing from County Administration and the Finance Director

• The choice of an exceptional CPA firm in Rehmann Robson

I think there is one thing more that happens when you continue to be recognized for excellent work and that is that we now expect excellence – almost as the starting point for these efforts.

My congratulations, again, to all those who worked on the 2006 CAFR: you continue to set the standard for consistent best practices.

Hope it’s a good, warmer week for all of us!

Bob