Happy New Year and New Decade

By Joelyn Carr-Fingerle, CPA

Happy New Year! And may this be the best decade yet! 2010 has a nice sound, doesn’t it? January is an interesting month for CPAs. Many of us are starting our busiest time of the year, but we are also waiting for much of it to commence, so we are making sure we are ready. Our chapter has many activities this month, including the Divorce Mini-Conference and a low-cost education seminar, both of which I urge you to attend for some great education that you’ll be able to put to use right away. Please also join us for our Honorees’ Night at the end of the month.

CalCPA is sponsoring CPA Day at the Capitol Jan. 20. We will be able to make a difference by making our voices heard by those regulating our profession. It only takes a day. CalCPA’s Government Relations team has scheduled legislator appointments and will provide us with the talking points and agenda. We will be assigned to groups with four to five other CPAs and CPA candidates to meet with our own legislators and discuss the issues concerning our profession.

This is our annual chance to really be heard, because most other groups do not go to Sacramento in January. We will have our legislators’ mostly undivided attention. Our state senators and assemblymembers really do listen to us, but we have to show up to be heard. We had great legislative success last year; we need to keep the momentum going in 2010. Please join me in Sacramento Jan. 20. If you have questions, contact Tom Parry, our Grassroots Legislative Committee chair, for more information and possible carpooling assistance.

Assemblymember Mary Hayashi, who is our representative, is chair of the Assembly Business and Professions Committee, which oversees the California Board of Accountancy. She will join us Jan. 28 at our Honorees’ Night and speak briefly about the committee, her role and what’s in store for CPAs in the near future. At this dinner we also will honor the LeVerne Garcia Award winner for service to the profession and will distribute eight scholarships totaling $21,000 to deserving recipients.

We do need your continued help with the scholarship fund. The Scholarship Committee has done a great job of selecting scholarship winners from among the applicants, but we need to provide the funds for the scholarships. And the need is growing more pressing each year, as the college system continues to increase fees at a rapid rate. Thank you to everyone who has given to the fund this fiscal year. CalCPA Chair Andrea Cope challenged us to each give $100 for CalCPA’s 100th anniversary, and we have responded well to that challenge. However if we received contributions from just half of our nearly 2,000 chapter members, we would raise $100,000 and could support more deserving students. Come to our Honorees’ Night and meet this year’s crop of scholarship winners, hear their stories and renew your faith in the future of our profession.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 12:25 pm 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.