Online Availability and Accessibility of U.S. Local Government Audited-GAAP Financial Statements

• In Event: The Governmental Accounting Information Environment

Abstract

Although citizens, standard setters, and professional associations have called for increased governmental financial transparency, there has been limited research examining the extent that U.S. local governments post financial statements to their website. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the determinants of online availability and the ease of accessibility of municipal, county, school district, and special district audited-GAAP financial statements. Using hand-collected data from 2017, we find that direct forms of oversight by voters, auditors, and states are positively associated with both the online availability/extent of availability of local government audited-GAAP financial statements. Our descriptive analysis also suggests that there has been significant improvement in the availability and accessibility of these statements from 2005 to 2017. However, our findings do suggest that smaller governments, special districts, and school districts are lagging behind their municipal and county counterparts in online financial reporting. Our results should assist policy makers as they consider additional ways to make high quality financial information available to citizens/taxpayers.

Authors

• Alan Keith Styles, Cal State University - San Marcos

• Beth Y. Vermeer, University of Delaware