View Howard County's Award-Winning FY21 Popular Annual Finance Report Online

HOWARD COUNTY, MD — The county’s inaugural fiscal year 2021 popular annual finance report has been recognized by the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada with its “Popular Annual Financial Reporting Award.”

“This award further solidifies our commitment to transparency and making sure our financial reports are easily accessible and readable by the general public,” Howard County Executive Calvin Ball said. “I want to thank everyone in our fantastic finance department for their hard work, award-winning excellence and continued efforts to help make Howard County an innovative and efficient government.”

A modified version of the county’s fully annual comprehensive financial report for FY2021, the PAFR is a shorter and simpler version to provide the public with an overview of the county’s operations, programs and financial condition in an accessible and transparent format.

Issued each fiscal year, the county’s annual comprehensive financial report includes statements of special revenue, capital projects, enterprise, internal service, trust and general funds. It also discloses the county’s long-term obligations and fixed assets, including infrastructure and statistical charts on multi-year tax collection and assessable base figures. The comprehensive report offers transparency in government accounting for the benefit of county taxpayers, elected officials, investors, vendors and consumers.

“We are very excited to receive this recognition for our inaugural edition of the PAFR because it means we achieved our goal of producing a high-quality report that is useful to the general public in understanding the County’s financial condition without the use of jargon or technical language,” said Rafiu Ighile, director of the county's department of finance.