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Accountancy Board Leader Looks to New Year, Ongoing Issues

By Kate Prouty

Possessing a wide-reaching command of public, private and government accounting, Society member J. Dwight Hadley will now chair the New York State Board for Public Accountancy, on which he has served as a member for approximately nine years. Hadley replaced Nicholas J. Mastracchio Jr. as chair on June 1.

Hadley feels the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy’s (NASBA) proposal to grant reciprocity to out-of-state CPAs will remain at the forefront of the board of accountancy’s agenda this year.

“In concept, the board (of accountancy) is 100 percent in support of out-of-state reciprocity,” Hadley said, “but the practical issue is that there are so many jurisdictions and everyone does things slightly differently. Our (the board’s) responsibility is to monitor the way things happen in New York state. To open it up to other states, we would need to be sure that we have all the safeguards to do so.”

Hadley also made his position known on peer review disclosure, another hot issue for the board to discuss during its meetings this year.

“I am personally in favor of peer review disclosure—otherwise how do you know it’s been done—but we need to find a way it can be done with ease,” said Hadley, who feels firms are more than willing to disclose the information if it doesn’t cause excessive burden, particularly to financially vulnerable small firms and nonprofit organizations.

The board will also play a role in how the state monitors audit regulations, Hadley said, and how to apply them in different situations, such as in a public company audit as compared to a government audit.

“We live in an environment where different auditing standards apply to different situations. Adapting new standards is not necessarily the worst thing in the world, we just have to monitor this as it develops,” Hadley said.

The board is responsible for advising the state’s Board of Regents and the State Education Department (SED) on matters on professional preparation licensure, practice and discipline for CPAs and public accountants in New York state.

Hadley currently spends most of his days at Albany International Airport, not in transit, but overseeing all financial affairs, property management and concession negotiations as CFO of the Albany County Airport Authority.

“Airports are fascinating places to work, understanding it’s a 24-hours-a-day, 365-days-a-year job in which you always find something new to do,” Hadley said of his unpredictable career. Working for the good of all the CPAs and PAs in New York state may feel the same way.

Prior to his post at the airport, Hadley gained experience in public accounting for 10 years with Arthur Young & Company and for a few years in private practice before eventually working in government accounting on the local and state levels, where he’s remained since the mid-1970s. He feels the “advantage of having been on many sides of the fence” will work in his favor in communicating with the Board of Regents and the SED.

Hadley has chaired several NYSSCPA statewide and chapter committees and has been a member of the American Institute of CPAs’ Government Accounting and Auditing and Members in Government committees. In addition to serving as an editorial advisor to the Journal of Accountancy, Hadley is a founding member and past president of the New York State Government Finance Officers’ Association.