The Virginia Acts of Assembly and Code of Virginia direct the office of the Auditor of Public Accounts (Office) to establish a prioritized early warning system and annually monitor data and information from this system to identify whether a locality may meet the defined criteria for fiscal distress.  As part of this annual fiscal distress monitoring process, the Office analyzes leading financial indicators through ratio analysis using data from each locality’s audited annual financial report.  As a second component of this process, we perform a qualitative analysis to consider demographic and non-financial factors, along with other applicable leading indicators and external information, for any locality whose financial ratio results indicate a need for further review.

 

The Office performs the annual monitoring process over all cities and counties, and those towns statutorily required to have an annual audit. This report includes the results of our 2020 and 2021 annual monitoring processes.