Municipal Finance Officer
A Municipal Finance Officer is a local government finance officer who is a municipal bureaucrat (for a municipal entity).
- AKA: Local Government Finance Director.
- Context:
- They can (typically) report the City Mayor, City Manager, Town Manager, or Town Administrator.
- They can manage a Municipal Finance Department.
- They can supervised (or perform the role of ) a Municipal Accountant, Municipal Treasurer, Municipal Collector, and Municipal Assessor.
- Example(s):
- Counter-Example(s):
- See: Finance Director, Municipal Accounting.
References
2016
- Massachussetts DoR. "THE ROLE OF A FINANCE DIRECTOR." August 2016
- QUOTE: The finance director is responsible for overseeing and coordinating a municipality’s financial activities. Depending on the broader government structure, the finance director typically reports to the mayor, city manager, town manager, or town administrator. Even without a formally organized finance department, the finance director usually supervises the accountant, treasurer, collector, and principal assessor, often while serving simultaneously in one of these positions. A fully empowered finance director also appoints, trains, and evaluates the other finance officers.
The finance director provides an expert resource for the community’s policymakers (i.e., the mayor and city council in cities or the select board and finance committee in towns) and is responsible for executing the financial policies set by them. Periodically and upon request, the finance director also reports to them on the municipality’s financial condition. The finance director is usually expected to play a substantial budgetary role, such as coordinating the budget process, projecting revenues and expenditures, and developing the capital improvement plan. He or she also oversees the completion of the annual Tax Recapitulation Sheet and the free cash certification process.
As the day-to-day manager of fiscal activities, the finance director ensures the other finance departments effectively carry out their respective responsibilities. Chairing regular meetings of the finance team helps the director remain fully informed on the status of accounts, cash flow, and debt. Further, the director must ensure the regular reconciliation of cash and receivables, the effective operation of other internal controls, and the timely fulfillment of reporting requirements to DLS.
- QUOTE: The finance director is responsible for overseeing and coordinating a municipality’s financial activities. Depending on the broader government structure, the finance director typically reports to the mayor, city manager, town manager, or town administrator. Even without a formally organized finance department, the finance director usually supervises the accountant, treasurer, collector, and principal assessor, often while serving simultaneously in one of these positions. A fully empowered finance director also appoints, trains, and evaluates the other finance officers.
2016
- Maxwell Murphy. (2016). “Cities, States Need Top Financial Talent, but Fall Short on Pay.” In: WSJ, Oct. 17, 2016
- QUOTE: Municipal finance chiefs in the Midwest earn between $85,000 and $160,000 … recruiter for the public sector and nonprofit groups. By contrast, the median compensation package— salary, bonus and stock options — for public-company finance executives was valued at $3.57 million …
1993
- (Brown, 1993) ⇒ Ken W Brown. (1993). “The 10-point Test of Financial Condition: Toward An Easy-to-use Assessment Tool for Smaller Cities.” In: Government Finance Review, 9.
- QUOTE: A thorough financial-condition assessment that involves a large number of factors and related indicators can be very time consuming for a municipality. As a result, analysis of financial condition may not be a regular part of financial management. When these comprehensive financial-condition assessments are conducted, the large amounts of data involved can make it difficult to communicate the results to a city's management, governing board and citizenry. This article describes a short test of financial condition that municipal finance officers can conduct for cities with populations