Several of the North Bay’s publicly traded companies will soon have to comply for the first time with the stringent accounting requirements of the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is still revising those requirements, and the companies face the dilemma of whether to prepare now using the current requirements or wait for the revisions, which are expected to ease the act’s burden on small companies.

Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002 in response to accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and other companies, but since then smaller firms have been arguing that the act is too costly for companies without large accounting staffs.

[1] North Bay Business Journal: Sarbanes-Oxley deadline approaches