A Long and Winding Road

25 Years of GASB

Craig Foltin, PhD, CPA

Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). This organization is an operating unit of the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), which also oversees the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Although state governments have the ultimate authority to prescribe generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), nearly three-quarters of the states (36) have laws that prescribe the use of governmental GAAP. For those states that do not, GASB has found that 87% of the largest municipal entities still follow it (“State and Local Government Use of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for General Purpose External Financial Reporting,” research brief, March 2008).