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Valuing Massachusetts' Fixed Assets: A Contemporary Solution To An Historical Problem
Author(s) -
Keith Richard L.,
McHugh Joseph A.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
public budgeting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1540-5850
pISSN - 0275-1100
DOI - 10.1111/1540-5850.00986
Subject(s) - fixed asset , slogan , valuation (finance) , audit , economics , finance , state (computer science) , miracle , asset (computer security) , government (linguistics) , business , actuarial science , accounting , computer science , law , political science , macroeconomics , computer security , production (economics) , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , politics
The “Miracle of Massachusetts” is a slogan of the past. The FY 1992 deficit was projected to be over one billion dollars. In this article the authors describe the efforts of a dedicated group of government employees who created innovative solutions to long‐standing problems. Massachusetts' financial statements could not obtain a “clean” audit opinion because the state's fixed asset records were unauditable. The group developed and implemented an acceptable method for valuation of those assets. This required inventorying all the fixed assets of the state, then valuing each of these items in accordance with either an historical cost or an acceptable surrogate.