PROFILING GFOA.

Meet the New President-elect and Executive Board Members

At the Government Finance Officers Association's (GFOA) annual business meeting in Philadelphia in June, members voted for a slate of nominees for president-elect and five new members-at-large of the GFOA Executive Board. The association is governed by the 18-member Executive Board, which consists of 15 members-at-large serving staggered three-year terms, the current president, the previous year's president, and the president-elect. This year's president-elect and newly elected members-at-large are profiled in this article.

President-elect W. Patrick Pate, Assistant City Manager, City of High Point, North Carolina, has been a GFOA member for 15 years and served on the Executive Board since 1998. He has served on both the Committee on Governmental Debt and Fiscal Policy and the Committee on Governmental Budgeting and Management. He chaired the Budget Committee's subcommittees on management and recommended practices. He has been an instructor for GFOA budgeting seminars and reviewed various budgeting publications published by the association. He is also a reviewer for the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award program and a part of GFOA's FOCAL Team. Pate's goal during his term will be to enhance GFOA's ability to promote the public finance profession through research, education, networking, and advocacy of issues that are important to public finance professionals. His specific areas of emphasis will be:

* building Executive Board relationships and partnerships with standing committees and state associations;

* creating recommended practices along with the training and publications that will provide the knowledge to implement these practices;

* continuing to provide training and member services using technological-based systems like the Internet and satellite conferencing to reach as many GFOA members as possible; and

* using the expertise of GFOA to help finance officials reach out to state, local, and national policy makers and oversight boards.

Pate says he is looking forward to meeting and talking with GFOA members about the issues of concern to them and ways that GFOA can assist them in meeting the challenges of being a finance officer.

Keith C. Brown, Division Manager, Finance and Accounting, and CFO, Lincoln Electric System, Lincoln, Nebraska, has been a GFOA member for 11 years. He served on the GFOA Committee for Governmental Debt and Fiscal Policy for the past six years...