Margaret Moggia, executive director of the California Society of Municipal Finance Officers was one of eight people we filmed at the GFOA’s annual conference in Chicago between June 28 and July 1. This is the fifth in the series that appears on Thursdays in this space.

She focused her comments on the issue of materiality. “We’ve been talking over the last year about materiality,” she says, “specifically in light of the new Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) standards that came out.” These standards were an attempt to clarify what data is sufficiently significant to include in an Annual Consolidated Financial Report (ACFIR). 

She indicated that there had been a great deal of effort to bring lots of perspectives to the table in order to appropriately implement the GASB pronouncement in such a way as to qualify for the GFOA’s award for Annual Consolidated Financial Reports. “And we are trying to find a way to be able to give permission, if you will, to auditors and practitioners to really evaluate on the back of the envelope, is (this) material to my overall finances?”

She went on to say that “I know GFOA has been doing a lot as it relates to materiality and showing different sort of case studies, and we look forward to seeing what we can do within our own state, but working with GFOA now we can take this effort that we’ve done over the last year and really take it into other states and see what they can do as well.”