Pitt pushes ahead on accounting panel.

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As Congress heads into its summer recess, still bogged down in debating a host of bills dealing with accounting and corporate governance issues, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt is signaling that he's not willing to simply wait for legislators to act amid the continuing governance crisis.

Pitt says he wants to have a new panel that would oversee the accounting profession, dubbed the Public Accountability Board (PAB), in place by the end of the year. "If legislation is enacted, we will, of course, recede," Pitt said in an announcement. "But if final legislation is not forthcoming, we want to be in a position to commence our new regulatory system before year-end."

Not surprisingly, the governance issue has become a political football, with Senate Republicans opposing more sweeping reforms offered this spring by Sen. Paul Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat. A more modest bill sponsored by Rep. Michael Oxley (R-Ohio) has already passed the House. In an election year, many observers say the odds for a reform package acceptable to both sides are fairly long. Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, speaking at a panel discussion in New York at the end of May, said that 33 bills were pending in Congress, but he voiced doubts that any would eventually be enacted.

Pitt, a former corporate attorney who had represented the major accounting firms in his private practice, has stirred controversy of his own over meetings with the head of KPMG LLP. Critics have claimed that he is too close to the accounting industry, and that reforms coming from the SEC have been too soft and too slow in coming.

But Pitt appears to have seized on the accounting panel as something truly...

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