This year’s annual audit time report from Merritt Research Services, an Investortools company, in partnership with the University of Illinois Chicago’s Government Finance Research Center, has been featured in The Bond Buyer, highlighting a crucial, often overlooked metric of fiscal health: timeliness in municipal bond audits.
This year’s report, “The Good, The Bad, and the Super Slow,” draws on nearly 12,000 audits across all municipal sectors and reveals that while there was a modest year-over-year improvement in audit delivery times for fiscal 2023, the long-term trend remains concerning. Over the past decade, the median time to complete an annual comprehensive financial report (ACFR) has risen by more than 10%, from 151 days in 2012 to 167 days in 2023.
Richard Ciccarone, President Emeritus of Merritt and co-author of the report, noted that while the improvement from 2022 may signal progress, it’s not yet a trend. “When we really want to change something, it starts with small steps,” he told The Bond Buyer. “But you’ve got to keep it up.”
Among the more alarming findings, some state governments, including Illinois and Nevada, had yet to file their fiscal year 2023 audits at the time of the report’s release, putting them over 700 days past due. The report calls this a new record for lateness among states and a red flag for a market that depends on transparency and accountability.
As the municipal bond market continues to evolve, Merritt’s research reinforces a critical message: timely audits are not just administrative tasks, they are essential to informed investment decisions and the integrity of public finance
Read The Bond Buyer article here: Municipal audit times improve, but long-term trends remain slow
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