Update from Hawaii

By Michelle E. Benton, CPA

Aloha! I have had a great first month as your San Joaquin Chapter president. In June, our chapter Vice President Chrissy Stiles and I traveled to Kona, Hawaii to attend CalCPA’s Annual Members’ Business and Council meetings.

The meetings were spectacular as always, and we welcomed Gregory M. Burke as CalCPA’s 2008–09 chair. We also learned about many pertinent items affecting CalCPA and its members. Among the topics discussed were government relations, chapter scholarships, CalCPA Institute’s accounting education initiative for post-graduate scholarships and fellowships, financial literacy, possible relocation of the Redwood City offices, and XBRL. It is obvious that a lot of exciting issues confront our profession, and it is amazing to me how important and upfront our government relations efforts are to each of us.

Many topics are evolving right now that will affect our profession. We are familiar with some of them, such as mobilization, AB 2473 and financial literacy, AB 2123. However, what about AB 1869, which was proposed to either reorganize or eliminate the California Board of Accountancy and transfer duties to the Department of Consumer Affairs? This version failed to receive enough votes on April 15 and is dead for this year, but we need to keep an eye out for the future.

The next CalCPA Day at the Capitol is scheduled for Jan. 21, 2009, so mark your calendars now for a day out prior to the hectic tax season! Our chapter is going to investigate ways we can implement financial literacy within our communities, and we anticipate a chapter-wide effort to make a difference—more to come in the next months! I hope everyone is enjoying the summer—and Mahalo!

—Michelle E. Benton, CPA

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.