Last updated on July 3rd, 2025
The Office of the New York State Comptroller provides a “Financial Toolkit for Local Officials,” containing guidance and tools for use by local government and school district leaders in navigating financial processes. This article provides a brief overview of this guidance, along with links to some of the resources available.
Identifying Fiscal Stress
The first section of the OSC financial toolkit contains information to help officials determine whether their municipality is under financial stress. Performing regular financial condition analyses, reviewing financial condition audits from other local governments, and implementing OSC’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System (FSMS) are all methods of evaluating your municipality’s financial health.
Budgeting
The financial toolkit next covers the subject of budgeting for local governments. OSC provides a guide entitled “Understanding the Budget Process,” which contains information on preparing, implementing, and monitoring your municipality’s budget. This guide outlines various components of the budget creation process for municipalities, including:
- Estimating Expenditures: All departments must submit an estimate of operational costs for the upcoming fiscal year to be reviewed by the budget officer. In addition to department estimates, other expenditures that must be taken into consideration include debt service costs, employee salaries, employee benefits, fuel and energy costs, possible costs for real property tax certiorari refunds, and payments to employees for compensated absences or separation from service.
- Establishing a Contingency Account: A contingency account contains appropriations for unforeseen circumstances.
- Estimating Revenue: Estimating revenue typically requires a historical analysis of revenues over a 3–5-year period. Revenue estimates should be developed for the following categories when applicable: non-property taxes (i.e., sales and use taxes, utility gross receipts taxes, mortgage recording taxes), departmental income, intergovernmental charges, use of money and property (such as interest earnings on investments and income from rental property or equipment), fines and forfeitures, sale of property and compensation for loss, interfund revenues, state and federal aid, interfund transfers, and other miscellaneous revenues.
- Estimating Available Fund Balance: Municipalities must properly estimate their year-end fund balance in order to use it as a funding source. It can be challenging for budget officers to calculate this value months in advance at budget time. The OSC guide provides general instructions for estimating year-end fund balance.
- Determining Real Property Taxes: Local governments need to determine the amount of real property taxes necessary to balance the budget. The formula for calculating the tax levy can be found in the guide.
The toolkit also offers strategies for addressing a current budget deficit, such as modifying the current budget, using established reserve funds, using available surplus fund balance, and issuing short-term debt.
Cash Flow Management
Cash flow management involves policies and procedures that help to control the movement of cash in and out of the municipality. The OSC provides cash flow management best practices for local governments which can be found here, and include actively monitoring cash flow, accelerating the collection and deposit of receipts, optimizing the timing of disbursements, maximizing interest earnings, and adhering to state legal requirements for depositing and investing public funds.
Additional Guidance
Local officials can refer to the OSC Financial Toolkit for additional information and resources including publications, fact sheets, and webinars. Meanwhile, for all of your municipality’s accounting, advisory, tax, and audit needs, you can rely on RBT CPAs. Give us a call to find out how we can be Remarkably Better Together.