Association of Local Government Auditors

Greetings ALGA Friends! 

First off, thank you very much for the opportunity to lead ALGA this year as President. I am humbled and honored by the opportunity to work with such good professionals and people and only hope I can step up to contribute as much as the 21 prior ALGA presidents.   Recently, a past president shared his brief three words of advice with me ... "Don't screw up."   I'm taking that advice to heart!

The end of summer comes along with bitter-sweet feelings.  It is the end of the summer vacations (mine was great!) and end of warmer weather, but also the start of a new school year, budget year, and cooler weather.  Yes, bitter-sweet for sure.

ALGA has also ended another good year led by a strong board and committee chairs.  During this upcoming year, we will lose some of our very active members to retirements (good for them, yet sad for us) and we will welcome some new members.  We will wish our retired friends well and ask new members and members who have not been previously active to step up and help our association and profession make a difference and add value in our local governments.  This year, we continue to have a strong board and committee chairs.  Some activities to look forward to include:

• Annual conference in Charlotte, NC, on May 16-17, 2011 (conference information anticipated to be available in December)
•  Regional trainings (topics, locations, and dates to be announced soon)
• Sharing of organization information through ALGA surveys
• Audio Conferences and webinars (dates and topics to be announced throughout the year)
• ALGA representation on national standard setting boards and committees
• Educational and interesting articles and resources in the Quarterly Journal (beginning with this journal focusing on risk-based auditing)
• ALGA advocacy and support for local government auditing organizations
•  Submissions for the 2010 Knighton Audit Report and Website Awards

Please remember, however, ALGA is a professional organization that depends greatly on its volunteers. We local government auditors are ALGA and ALGA is us.  You can help ALGA succeed this year by contacting me or another board member (identified in the front of the Quarterly) to inform us of your desire to get involved, saying "Yes" when asked to participate on ALGA committees and peer reviews, and/or attending annual conference, regional, web, or audio trainings. Information about each of the ALGA committees is provided on the ALGA web pages (under About ALGA, Committees).

The ALGA Board will hold its next meeting at the end of September.  If you have any suggestions to help ALGA better serve us with our existing resources or ideas to help ALGA better promote local government auditing, please send them to me (beth.breier@talgov.com)

Beth Breier, ALGA President, 2010-2011