Friday, March 18, 2011

TOP STORY > >Finance department wins again

By RICK KRON
Leader staff writer

The Jacksonville Finance Department is one of the top financial entities in the state and has just been awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the 13th straight year in a row.

Cheryl Erkel, with the department, said it’s a true honor although there are one or two cities in the state that have a longer streak than Jacksonville. “But we plan on extending ours,” she said.

The certificate was awarded by the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada to Jacksonville’s finance department for its outstanding comprehensive annual financial report.

The department received the award for its 2009 financial reporting. “We are putting the 2010 reports together now for the association to review,” Erkel said.

The only other cities in the state winning the award for 2009 financial reporting were Conway, Fayetteville, Fort Smith, Hot Springs, Little Rock and Maumelle.

The Certificate of Achieve-ment is the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting, and its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management.

For the city’s longtime finance director Paul Mushrush this is another feather in his cap before his April retirement, and one he hopes the department will continue to acquire under a new leader. “It’s an honor for us to be recognized for the hard work and for the effort and accuracy it takes to produce these reports,” he said.

Mushrush, 65, has been the finance director for 17 years, and has 22 years of service with the department. Before that he was in retail sales in California.

He said that when he retires, he’d love to take six months off before having to find something else to do “You can only mow the grass so much,” he quipped.

He and his wife plan a long visit with family in California and spending some time with the grand-dogs.

When Mushrush first came onboard, there was just one computer in city hall. “I got the second one,” Mushrush said. “And when I became finance director I set up the first network in city hall. It steamrolled from there.” City hall now houses nine servers and more than 150 computers.

Mushrush is proud of the comprehensive financial reporting the department does and has been honored for. “We are the smallest city in the state that produces these types of reports. We’ve won the excellence award 13 times, going on 14.”

The city’s financial reports were judged by an impartial panel and said to meet the high standards of the program including demonstrating a constructive “spirit of full disclosure” to clearly communicate its financial story and motivate potential users and user groups to read the reports.

The GFOA is a nonprofit professional association serving about 17,500 government finance professionals with offices in Chicago and Washington.

The GFOA established the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Program in 1945. It encourages and assists state and local governments to go beyond the minimum requirements of generally accepted accounting principles to prepare comprehensive annual financial reports that evidence the spirit of transparency and full disclosure.

The association then recognizes individual governments that succeed in achieving that goal with the award.