Highlights of fall Council meeting.

Here are some of the more significant actions and events that took place at the governing Council meeting Oct. 20-22:

* William F. Ezzell of Washington, D.C., was elected as chairman of the AICPA Board of Directors for 2002-2003 and S. Scott Voynich of Georgia as vice chair.

* Council heard the inaugural speech of the incoming chairman. The primary theme of Ezzell's speech was that this is a year of "restoration" for the profession, and one of action to regain investor confidence in the capital markets and in CPAs.

* Elaborating on his Sept. speech on anti-fraud initiatives at the Yale Club in New York, AICPA President and CEO Barry C. Melancon discussed the Institute's six major roles: as a standard setter and its goal to obtain greater involvement of financial statement users, as liaison between market institutions and corporations, in research to improve undergraduate education and enhance audit procedures to detect fraud, as educator regarding fraud training programs for management and fraud CPE for members, in advancing the level of financial reporting, and in promoting strong corporate governance and internal control systems.

* Melancon announced a major new initiative--the creation of an advocate for small firms. This position will focus on issues specific to smaller firms and the services they need. It also will be involved in efforts to prevent the cascading of federal legislation to legislative or regulatory bodies at the state level.

* Outgoing chair James G. Castellano along with Melancon made a presentation on the past year's strategic initiatives and challenges, including the fallout from Enron and WorldCom; formation of a special committee, chaired by former AICPA Chairman Kathy G. Eddy, to assist state CPA societies with implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (i.e., the cascade effect); and other initiatives, such as student recruitment and computerization of the Uniform CPA Examination.

* One major charge of the Professional Ethics Executive Committee has been to make the enforcement process more timely and transparent. PEEC provided an overview of the current enforcement process and discussed plans for its enhancement.

* The Auditing Standards Board provided an update on projects relating to an enhanced audit risk model, including clarifying the risk assessment process (see page 5), strengthening the linkage between risk assessment and procedures performed, and...