Citizen Centric Reports

The Mercer County Improvement Authority (MCIA) has prepared a four-page “Report to our Community” as part of a national initiative by the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) to bring clarity to reporting at all levels of government. In doing so, the MCIA joined other states, counties and municipalities in adopting the model used by AGA’s Citizen Centric Initiative.

The initiative aims to bring more citizens into discussions over local priorities by making government financial documents short and easy to understand. The AGA has encouraged municipal, county and state governments to publish straightforward reports about their fiscal condition, performance and future challenges that provide an honest and clear answer to the question “Are we better off today than we were last year?”

Government financial statements generally read like telephone books, with more pages of footnotes than the average citizen knows what to do with. The Citizen Centric project is about making reports easier to read and making them understandable for the community.

The Report to our Community 2013 is available here.

The Report to our Community 2011 is available here.