Photo courtesy of Aycha Sawa
Aycha Sawa currently serves as the City of Milwaukee's deputy comptroller.
In the upcoming spring elections, Aycha Sawa—current deputy comptroller for the City of Milwaukee—will run for the comptroller office. Sawa’s experience in accounting and finance would bring professional certification and experience to the office. Living in Milwaukee near the UW-Milwaukee campus with her husband and 18-month-old daughter, Sawa says she loves the city and their community. Shepherd Express spoke with Sawa on her fitness for the office and what she could do for Milwaukee if elected.
Tell us about your experience as Milwaukee’s deputy comptroller.
Yes, I am the deputy comptroller. The comptroller is the city’s chief financial officer; that means that the comptroller is the fiscal watchdog of the city. In other words, you could describe it as being the chief accountant or the chief auditor for the city. The comptroller is really responsible for all the monitoring and the oversight of the city—sort of a double check, if you will. They are responsible for monitoring all federal and state grants that the city gets. We do all the accounting and the financial statements, and the financial statements are about 160 pages long, so that’s a pretty big feat that is completed every single year.
Probably something the city employees love is that we also do the payroll for everybody in the city, and we run the public debt program, so we issue all the bonds for the city. We do the revenue estimates, and we have fiscal analysis. We do independent analysis of the mayor’s projects when they have tax incremental financing districts that are created, and last but not least, we also run the internal audit program of the city, which is doing audits. Those include operational financial audits of the mayor’s departments and within that division as well. The internal audit division runs the fraud hotline, and any employee or citizen of the city can call in and complain about any type of abuse that they see or that they think might be happening.
For the taxpayer, are you the watchdog and the one to make sure our dollars are well-spent?
Yes, how our dollars are spent and how they are looked after. They’re monitored so that everything is spent the way it should be.
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Why do you think you should get this job, which is similar to getting a promotion?
I think that the city deserves and needs somebody that knows what they are doing. In order to be that fiscal watchdog, this is an independent and professional position, so you really need that independent person in between the mayor and the Common Council. I think that I can serve Milwaukee residents to help keep our city running well.
Just like the county, the city of Milwaukee has both a comptroller and a treasurer. What’s the difference between them?
The treasurer, as you know, collects the taxes. They collect everybody’s cash, and then they take that cash, and they invest it; they administer just the cash portion of everything. When we are paying checks, which the comptroller’s office does, the treasurer is the one who disperses the money. Their duties are much narrower.
The comptroller’s duties are the all-encompassing accounting and finance of everything. There also needs to be separation of duties in internal controls, because the person that’s holding the cash shouldn’t be doing the accounting.
What should the voters know about you beside the fact you’ve been in a strong position as the deputy comptroller—the second in command—and you have an accounting degree?
In my entire career, since I graduated from college, I’ve worked in government accounting and audit. I worked for the state as an auditor, and I worked at the CPA firm auditing state and local governments, so I have become a municipal accounting and audit finance expert.
I think the other thing that voters should know—and a good reason they should consider voting for me—is because I’ve been that independent professional my entire time in the city comptroller’s office. I was the audit manager, and I was always the independent, thoughtful person that just reported the results as-is. I was not always liked by certain people, and I’ve had to work with other elected officials, which, I think, is actually the biggest part of being an independent comptroller—working with the other elected leaders but also being that independent professional and always reporting the results as-is. I will always be that truthful, honest person. And I’m a CPA and an internal certified auditor.
What do you hope to do for Milwaukee?
What I hope to do for Milwaukee is to keep that independent office and to keep the fiscal monitoring and the oversight in check so that our city can continue operating well and improve. One other thing that I do hope to do, which is a little different from the past, is I actually want to increase visibility to the community and the public. I think that there is more that the community and the city residents can know about the comptroller’s office or different financial tidbits of information. I have some plans to kind of do some community outreach that way, too.
I don’t think there are a lot of women comptrollers throughout our nation. I assume that, if you ended up winning this election, you would be a wonderful role model for that. Have you thought about that?
I have. I had gone to a student forum at a Milwaukee public high school, and I was just messaging with the teacher the other day. I told her, you know, I would love to come back and speak to any group of students about government service and accounting as a career, which is a STEM career. Because it is a great profession in general, and even right now in the economy, if you’re an accountant or a CPA and you can’t find a job, there is something wrong. Women are increasingly going to college for these types of careers as well, and we are in 2020. If I win, I would be the first female comptroller for the City of Milwaukee.
