You have just been hired as the CFO/Comptroller of Overton county and report to the also newly-hired County Executive, Sarah Smith.

You have just been hired as the CFO/Comptroller of Overton county and report to the also newly-hired County Executive, Sarah Smith.  She was previously the CEO of a large manufacturing company that operates in the area.  She is not familiar with government accounting, but has raised some questions about the county’s finances that she wants you to address – she emailed you the following questions:
Why do we issue all of these different financial statements – why don’t we just issue a balance sheet and an income statement like a business does?
I reviewed the approved budget for this year and would like to move $30,000,000 money from the Parks and Recreation Department over to the Economic Development Department to attract greater business investment in the county.  Can you please process this budget change?
To promote economic development, I would like to reduce the sales tax to 5% and would like to reduce property taxes by 10%.  How can we move forward with this?

Please prepare a 2 page memorandum addressed to Ms. Smith outlining your responses to these questions incorporating any relevant accounting guidance and other information to support your position and offer your thoughts on how you and Ms. Smith can work best together to ensure that accounting standards and laws and regulations are not violated.  Your memorandum should be written in a professional manner, should be clear and convincing, with appropriate grammar and structure, and cite the outside resources you used in preparing the memorandum.

You have just been hired as the CFO/Comptroller of Overton county and report to the also newly-hired County Executive, Sarah Smith.