Admittedly, audit committees are only one of an array of governance attributes that potentially influence the financial reporting and internal control environments of local governments. To discern between the effects of oversight by audit committees versus other governance mechanisms, we include several municipal governance attributes that relate to the financial reporting system. Extant literature suggests direct democracy provisions that encourage citizen lawmaking, such as initiative and referendum provisions, are important components of municipal policies (e.g., Gordon 2009; Matsusaka 1995) For example, Compton, Gore, and Kulp (2013) find that voter activism influences financial policies such as severance payments to bureaucrats. From a financial reporting perspective, Baber et al. (2013) find that voter oversight mechanisms are associated with fewer accounting restatements. Following Baber et al. (2013) and Zhang (2012), we set the indicator variable BOTH PROVISIONS equal to 1 if the municipality has both initiative and referendum provisions in place, and NEITHER PROVISION equal to 1 if the municipality has
neither of these provisions. Both indicator variables are set to 0 for municipalities with either, but not both, provisions. Additionally, RECALL ATTEMPT, which measures citizen activism, is set to 1 if citizens attempted to recall either the mayor or a council member in the preceding five years.