State House News Service: Comptroller Hopes to End String of Late Financial Filings
Comptroller William McNamara expects to file an annual financial report that was due Oct. 31 by the end of the week and said he is hopeful that next year will break the pattern of consistently late filings.
The state comptroller must finalize the books on the fiscal year that ends June 30 each year and file the state’s annual Statutory Basis Financial Report by each Oct. 31.
Before the comptroller can prepare the SBFR, though, the Legislature must pass a so-called closeout supplemental budget to balance all the books and the governor must sign it into law. That process has been thrown out of whack in recent years as lawmakers have opted to wait longer and longer to pass that bill, creating headaches for at least the last two comptrollers.
This year, with the added complication of a pandemic, the close-out supplemental budget was not finalized until Nov. 10.
“I think a good way to put it is that the statute sets the date on which we are to complete the work of the SBFR. The statute does not address the date on which we’ll be able to begin our work on the SBFR,” McNamara told the Comptroller Advisory Board on Wednesday.
He added, “Given the reality of the year, my hope was that we could achieve delivery in November. The timing made that unreachable. I’m disappointed, but I recognize this year presented an extraordinary emergency in public health and the economic life of the state. And in that context, the timing of the SBFR was a subsidiary concern.”