As more and more cities, counties, districts, and states across America falsely declare their near- insolubility, bankruptcy warnings, fiscal deficits, and budgetary quandaries, I am left with the sinking feeling that “the people” just can’t wrap their heads around how to point out these misleading and downright fallacious claims made by their councils, mayors, and professional con-men in places of public trust.

And personally, I’m tired of watching…

So today I want to share with you a simple way to factually stand before your local or state political “leaders” and give indisputable proof that, when stating the “facts” about their own budget shortfalls, limited choices, and necessary raising of your hard-earned monies as taxation (revenue) to “balance the budget”, your own little criminal syndicate of elected mayors and council men and women are lying bold-faced to the entire citizenry through the act of subterfuge and omission.

This little factoid is uniform throughout the entirety of the financial structure of government, as reported in the audited Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and required by Federal and State laws. It is always reported in the same fashion and under the same heading as all other governments (municipal corporations). The figures are not disputable. The truth is unshakable. And yet the doublespeak will never end… For even as you present this one simple line item to the scoundrels themselves behind their raised and protective pedestals, they will still attempt to deny what is undeniable, be it in ignorance or in deceit; usually a mix of both.

So, here it is… a tool for all people to easily use:

Step 1:

First of all, you must find your city/county/district/or state CAFR, which can sometimes be challenging in and of itself.

A search on your favorite search engine of “Your City” “Comprehensive Annual Financial Report” “Year” will generally do the trick. You may need to add the state after the city, or you may need to go to your government’s website to find these CAFR’s. If they are not to be found online, then your government is required to hand over a hard-copy or digital copy to you upon request. It’s the law, folks!

Now that you have the CAFR in front of you, you are probably overwhelmed with all of the nonsensical figures, financial wizardry, and creative accounting that is presented in over 100 pages of a pure accounting nightmare.

But don’t worry, you can ignore all that. For our purposes, we are only concerned with one single page of this entire report. And this page is specifically listed in the index as the “STATEMENT OF NET ASSETS“. This page is generally in the first 10-30 pages of the CAFR report, and will always be listed in the index.

For the purposes of this lesson, here is an example CAFR from the City of Pacifica, Ca.I found this with a search parameter of “Pacifica Comprehensive Annual Financial Report 2011″, and clicked on the 5th link down which took me to the finance department of the “City Of Pacifica” website.

LINK –> http://www.cityofpacifica.org/depts/finance/cafrs/default.asp

Click on the “2011” link to open the CAFR .pdf, and go to the index.

Here you will see, as with all other CAFR reports, an entry for the “STATEMENT OF NET ASSETS“, listed under the FINANCIAL SECTION, and under “GOVERNMENT-WIDE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS”. This tells us to go to page 17 of this particular Comprehensive Annual Financial Report to find our “statement of net assets”.

That’s it! This is the hardest part of the whole process.

Now breathe… it’s all simple from here on in – and quite an eye-opener!!!

Step 2:

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