The Evolving Role of Government Financial Executives

This is because of the present importance of the functions of the finance executives which helps the government in various ways like helping operation managers develop the financial parts of business cases and proposals for new or expanded services; leading efforts to reposition and increase the funding sources which have not been appropriated like fees, rents, royalties and franchises; provide guidance for financing new and original ventures like setting up of revolving funds, getting into public and private partnerships, or even setting up of fee for service arrangements; help performance based management; to activate a level playing field for the competition between government and the private sector

             (From Scorekeeper to Business Partner: The Evolving Role of Government Financial Executives).

             Accounting mistakes.

             Sometimes the finance executives are placed in situations beyond their capability and these results in many problems. One of the instances when this sort of event occurs is in situations when the elected person leaves it to the finance person to manage the affairs in even the small cities. Even they have become multi-million dollar enterprises today. The elected person may have been a merchant, homemaker, lawyer, community activist or anything else, but in general they have little understanding of public finance. This makes them rely on the administrators or auditors that they have in their organization. This is what happened in Orange County, California and the faulty investment strategy of the treasurer led to losses for the county of well over a billion dollars. The budget that is presented may be balanced, but that does not mean that the collection and disbursement of money is in proper order. (Guarding the Public Checkbook) .

             In certain cases, for balancing the budget, easy methods are adopted; the money is drawn from reserves. This withdrawal can be done only once, yet the city of Miami followed this process for many years as the city had deficit operations and used bond collections to cover it up.

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