The following short video of Jennifer Becker, financial services director for the city of Burbank, California, was one of seven we filmed at the Government Finance Officers Association’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida, between June 11 and June 13.

The previous videos, which were posted over the last couple of weeks, were with Sharon Edmundson, director of municipal finance programs with the North Carolina League of Municipalities, which can be seen here; David Goldman, deputy city administrator for Oak Harbor, Washington, which can be seen here;  Zach Markovits vice president and local practice lead at Results for America, which you can view here; and GFOA Executive Director Chris Morrill, which is available here. 

We will continue sharing each of those short videos over the coming weeks. 

In this one, Becker, who is a member of the GFOA Rethinking Financial Reporting Task Force as is Edmundson, delves into some of the problems that cities, counties and states face in dealing with an overabundance of requirements for their Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports, as well as some exciting potential solutions. We covered this topic thoroughly in a recent Route Fifty column “The Devil Is In The (Financial Reporting) Details”.

A few highlights from the video:

• “Every requirement you add is another one that we have to maintain basically forever. So . . . in a time where accounting firms and city governments are short staffed, we’re being asked to do more than ever in terms of financial reporting.”

• “One thing we’ve talked about doing is taking all of our financial data in its raw form, rather than as a PDF document that somebody spent many labor hours to put together and allowing the readers. . . to take that data and use modern technology tools like AI. . . to put that data together in a form that the user wants.”

• “We can come up with a more streamlined financial reporting process because I think we know that adding labor is not the answer.”

(In 2023, we also produced a number of filmed interviews at GFOA’s annual conference in Portland, which we ran as one big feature under the headline “Voices from the GFOA.”)

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