Auditors' and governmental financial officers' views on expanding the Sarbanes-Oxley Act provisions to state and local governments

This paper examines whether certain provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX, 2002) should be expanded to include state and local governmental entities. Surveying governmental financial officials (GFOs) and their external auditors to gauge support for SOX-like legislation for governmental entities, we find the strongest support for auditor independence rules similar to SOX, management assessment of, and reporting on, internal controls, and severe penalties for destruction of records, fraud, and failure to report fraud.