INTRODUCTION
Audit committee oversight is often considered to be an important component of financial policies and decisions (e.g. Klein 2002; Agrawal and Chadha 2005; Armstrong, Guay, and Weber 2010). This is particularly germane in the government sector, where expenditures are large, agency problems are common (Gordon 2009), and voter oversight is often scarce (Zimmerman 1977). Since 1997, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) has recommended that municipalities voluntarily form audit committees to enhance the credibility of government financial reporting (GFOA 2008). Despite the GFOA recommendations, few studies consider how audit committees influence governmental financial reporting.2 The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the presence and composition of municipal audit committees is associated with high quality internal control systems.