New Opportunities

By Joseph A. Forlenza, CPA

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a spectacular holiday season and has settled back into business as usual. As the seasons shift, we focus on new and different goals. Hopefully, the preparation begun and nurtured in autumn will produce growth in the spring and summer. New and old opportunities are accessible and attainable yet again.

About 17 individuals, including chapter board members and past presidents, student leaders and CalCPA staff, represented our chapter Jan. 20 at CPA Day at the Capitol in Sacramento. Despite the rain and nasty winds, it was a successful event and we met with many of our local legislators and their staff. While we didn’t have any specific hot item to discuss, the visits did generate quite a bit of political goodwill. We thanked the legislators for their help with our recent legislative successes, which included passage of California’s 150-hour rule/substantial equivalency, mandatory peer review, a license-status disclosure bill and the reinstatement of taxpayer privilege, which is now consistent with federal legislation. Also, we offered to present CalCPA’s financial literacy program to constituents within the community.

The next day brought more foul weather across the state, grounding some of our San Diego contingent in Sacramento due to the closing of the San Diego airport. I really admire the commitment of our board members to persevere in the face of these challenges. During the CalCPA Council meeting held Jan. 21, Conrad Davis introduced us to a new chapter report format: CalCPA Key Performance Indicators. The new report acts like a chapter performance dashboard that graphically presents our progress in benchmarks such as membership and event attendance. I think this will be a great tool to drive chapter performance and will help us align with CalCPA’s strategic initiatives developed at past council meetings.

During the meeting, we received a federal legislative update from AICPA Government Affairs Vice President Mark Peterson, who highlighted the AICPA’s efforts to protect the profession from being blamed for the financial meltdown and noting their efforts to ensure that any regulatory legislation that is passed will be fair and equitable. We also heard from John Chiang, California State controller. Chiang stated that the meltdown in California is ongoing and will require some very hard choices from the legislature. We learned from CalCPA CEO Loretta Doon that CalCPA’s headquarters will move closer to San Francisco International Airport to a building located near highways 92 and 101 in San Mateo County. CalCPA has negotiated a 10-year lease with the option to purchase in the third year. The building provides meeting facilities that can be used for training. CAMICO and the Group Insurance Trust will share this facility with CalCPA. As one who has made the trek to CalCPA’s current offices on Radio Road, I look forward to the new location.

That’s all for now! I wish everyone a smooth, prosperous and busy season.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 2:20 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.