Proposition 13 is certain to continue to be a hot topic in 2016 and beyond as “reformers” continue to work on mobilizing a statewide effort to enact a “split-roll” that raises billions of dollars in increased property taxes from California businesses. I have worked in and around Prop. 13 in one form or another for...

What if most of the public employee compensation enhancements of the past decade or more in California were based on inaccurately optimistic government financial statements? Or to be blunt, what if government decision makers thought they could afford these compensation enhancements, because the information they relied on used accounting gimmicks that would land a person...

“Apres moi le deluge” Louis XV If accounting standards were peasants with pitchforks, then this quote from the last King of France to die with a head on his shoulders might well describe what lies before us. Because history may remember 2013 as the last year that public entities could hide their debts and deceive...

Everyone remembers how thousands of bankers and millions of homeowners were caught by surprise when the real estate bubble collapsed in late 2008. One of the major reasons this prodigious bubble was allowed to inflate in the first place was because credit rating agencies did not properly evaluate the financial risks inherent in collateralized mortgage...