Internal control systems are important elements of financial reporting quality in part because they predict (or prevent) future significant accounting and financial reporting problems. Prior literature generally suggests that corporate audit committee oversight influences the strength of internal control systems, where audit committee independence or financial expertise is associated with fewer internal control weaknesses (Krishnan 2005; U. Hoitash, R. Hoitash, and Bedard 2009).
The relatively few studies in the nonprofit and government sector that examine the determinants of internal control problems show that nonprofit entities are more likely to experience internal control problems when they are smaller, audited by less experienced auditors, financially distressed, growing, more complex, or the subject of prior audit findings (Keating, Fischer, Gordon, and Greenlee 2005; Petrovits, Shakespeare, and Shih 2011). In the government sector, municipalities with internal control problems are shown to have higher audit fees (Raman and Wilson 1992), non-staggered council elections (Peterson 2014), and audits conducted by CPA
firms as opposed to the state government (Lopez and Peters 2010). Furthermore, Jakubowski (1995) finds that more control problems are reported in counties than in cities, and the frequency of control weaknesses reported declined significantly over the first four reporting years under the Single Audit Act for city governments, but remained relatively constant for county governments
If municipal audit committees similarly provide enhanced monitoring over the internal control environment, then we expect an inverse association between their presence and internal control weaknesses. As a result, we present the following hypothesis (stated in null form).