GFOA Executive Board approves new best practices.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Date: 01 December 2015

On September 25, 2015, GFOA's Executive Board approved five new best practices and seven revised best practices, providing recommendations to government finance officers in the areas of accounting, budget, retirement benefits administration, capital planning, and debt issuance.

Understanding Your Continuing Disclosure Responsibilities. The Committee on Governmental Debt Management updated this best practice to alert issuers to the increasing attention of federal policymakers and investor advocacy organizations on improving disclosure for government bond issuers. The updated best practice emphasizes specific areas for issuers to make improvements in based on the SEC's 2014 Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation Initiative (MCDC), as well as separate SEC enforcement cases, such as the 2013 case against the City of Harrisburg, PA and the 2014 Allen Park, MI case. The GFOA is firmly committed to helping issuers understand and meet their federal continuing disclosure obligations, and has updated this best practice to further that effort.

Using Technology for Disclosure. Beyond updating this best practice to increase issuer awareness of federal regulatory efforts to improve issuer disclosure, the Debt Committee also wanted to alert issuers to improved uses of not only issuer websites, but also new features on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board's (MSRB) Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA) system, which enables issuers to...