Scott Adair will be honored at the Moynihan Scholarship Fund Gala on May 24. Information about the event is available here, and tickets are available here. Scott M. Adair

“When I was an auditor of government [at KPMG], I often said, ‘Why can’t they just do this? Why isn’t it just that simple to change that, to change how you process this transaction?’” he said. “It’s not until you get into the organization and see all the challenges the organization has, both from a personal and professional perspective, [that you understand].”

Adair has become well familiar with these challenges over the 14 years he has been involved in the public sector, and he has met them with a CPA’s sober eye and attention to detail. Always good with numbers, a young Adair at first pondered becoming a math teacher, but he developed a passion for accounting after taking some bookkeeping courses. He entered public accounting after graduation, working for eight years at a local CPA firm where he spent all his time auditing local governments. He then joined KPMG, where he continued to specialize in audits of governmental entities. Over his eight years at KPMG, his clients included New York state government, the state dormitory authority, various colleges and universities, and numerous county governments.

It was one of these clients—his home county of Monroe, shortly after electing a new county executive in 2004—that asked whether he’d be interested in being controller. After some deliberation, he decided to take the job, saying he wanted to give back to the Rochester-area community in which he lived. He he has been in government ever since.

“It was a unique spot to be able to make my mark, not only for me personally as far as giving back but for the profession as well: doing a good job and making folks realize the value in having a CPA on board, someone with the diverse skill set and knowledge that we have,” he said.

Adair spent four years overseeing Monroe’s finances as controller, then served four more years as the county CFO. In 2013, he began his current job as CFO of the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority. He said that the transition to the regional transit authority was not as difficult as one might think, mainly because in 2010 then-Governor David Paterson had already appointed him to the board, so he was able to come in with some knowledge of the organization.

“I obviously had the challenges of understanding in great detail some of the unique things in transit finance, but had a good group of people to teach and show me the ropes,” said Adair.

Over the years as CFO, Adair said he has cultivated even more good people within the organization, saying that he feels confident about its “bench strength” right now. As a CFO, Adair works hard to ensure that his staff can grow, learn and develop professionally, to ensure that they’ll be ready when the next challenge or a new role comes into play.

In all his years in government, he has worked hard to impart the CPA’s ethic of efficiency and fiscal discipline, while at the same time challenging his own negative assumptions of how government works.

“People say all the time that government just spends money, but there’s a number of folks inside those entities that do continue, because of the pressure by the public and elected officials, to keep those costs down or find other ways to do more things with less money,” he said.

Through strategic planning, he is able to oversee the finances of a transit authority that serves an annual 17 million riders in eight counties across the state, and overcome its challenges. He is particularly proud of his work in developing county budgets that maintained services without raising taxes, reflecting his priority of controlling costs.

“The folks who use our service today cannot necessarily afford an increase to their fare all the time, so it’s really important [that] we keep our dollar fare for people who use our actual transit system,” he said.

It was this sort of mindset that convinced him to pursue local politics in 2015, when the local Republican Party asked him to run for councilman in his hometown of Henrietta, a community of about 42,000. He recalled the experience of campaigning as one where he needed to regularly get out of his comfort zone as an accountant.

“I spent the majority of my summer and fall going door to door meeting folks I’ve never met before, and it was a real challenge to get outside your normal accounting shell and put your personality and knowledge to work for you to try to get elected, because everyone is looking for something slightly different,” he said.

After winning the election, Adair found that his background as a CPA gave him an intuitive understanding of the town’s financial structure.

“You’re certainly able to look at the numbers much [more easily and quickly] than others sitting around the table, but sometimes you need to slow that train down because it is so basic a skill set to you,” he said,   “but [there are] other folks on the board who don’t have that, and you can become a real helpful ally in educating your board members.”

And when confronted by a situation even he doesn’t understand, Adair has received help through his access to the NYSSCPA’s vast network of experts. He recalled that, during his first year as a councilman, a representative from Goldman Sachs approached the county about tax increment financing bonds, which municipalities often use for redevelopment, and that he “had no idea what they were about.” So, he called fellow former Society president J. Michael Kirkland, who put him in touch with an expert at Deutsche Bank. As a result of a phone call with the expert, Adair was able to brief other county decision makers on the issue.

“When Goldman Sachs wanted to talk about it, they were impressed with how much advance knowledge we had of it, and that was because I picked up the phone and was in contact with this person inside of a day, and the amount of knowledge I got from that phone call was invaluable,” he said.

Just as going from auditing governments to working for them gave him a better understanding of their challenges, becoming a local politician has given him insight into what sometimes frustrated him as a CFO. The biggest difference, he said, was that a CFO is in the nitty gritty of an organization and understands what happens on a day-to-day basis. By contrast, serving on a town board, like serving on a corporate board, offers a less comprehensive perspective. Adair said that he “trusts the folks who are dealing with the issue on a full-time basis but never loses that CPA perspective on verification.”

As much as he is challenged by these sorts of issues, Adair believes in his ability to make a difference in people’s lives, a faith that is shared by many of his fellow CPAs.

“Scott’s commitment to government and his role as a steward for the public emanates from all facets of his life,” wrote fellow past NYSSCPA President Joseph M. Falbo Jr. in his letter nominating Adair for the award. “If our communities each had just a few more Scott Adairs involved in government, I have no doubt we would all be better because of it.” Falbo wrote that a bevy of past and present Society officers joined him in supporting the nomination. “Many more members of the NYSSCPA have expressed their support in recognizing Scott’s enormous contributions,” he said. “… Unfortunately, due to space constraints, I am unable to detail them all for you.