Excerpt:
The question of whether pensions and other retirement benefits should be more prominently reported by state and local governments is a burning controversy for the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.
What?s at stake is whether the public is being misled by when a governmental general fund is listed in financial statements as balanced while omitting those long-term debts.
GASB requires long-term obligations to be reported in governmentwide reports, but critics say lawmakers too often look only at cash flow funds.
?I implore GASB to stop this confusion and bewilderment,? wrote Sheila Weinberg, founder & CEO of Truth in Accounting in a comment letter. ?Our representative form of government is being harmed.?
Illinois is among the states that critics say have downplayed their tens of billions of dollars of unfunded long-term debts and should be forced by new GASB rules to become more transparent.
GASB officials, on the other hand, say that state and local governments have been required to disclose their long-term debts since the publication of GASB 34 about 20 years ago.
Author(s): Brian Tumulty
Publication Date: 9 April 2021
Publication Site: Fidelity Fixed Income