The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is currently the source of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) used by State and Local governments in the United States of America. As with most of the entities involved in creating GAAP in the United States, it is a private, non-governmental organization.
The GASB is subject to oversight by the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), which selects the members of the GASB and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and funds both organizations.
The mission of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board is to establish and improve standards of state and local governmental accounting and financial reporting that will result in useful information for users of financial reports and guide and educate the public, including issuers, auditors, and users of those financial reports.
The GASB has issued Statements, Interpretations, Technical Bulletins, and Concept Statements defining GAAP for state and local governments since 1984. GAAP for the Federal government is defined by the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board.
Famous quotes containing the words governmental, accounting, standards and/or board:
“Almost every thing, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two [good and evil].”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I, who am king of the matter I treat, and who owe an accounting for it to no one, do not for all that believe myself in all I write. I often hazard sallies of my mind which I mistrust.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“A generation which has passed through the shop has absorbed standards and ambitions which are not of those of spaciousness, and cannot get away from them. Everything with them is done as though for sale, and they naturally have in view the greatest possible benefit, profit and that end of the stuff that will make the best show.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“What happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to “negotiate” between this hunger and this greed.”
—Meridel Le Sueur (b. 1900)