This papers investigate whether the presence of council financial oversight (i.e. audit and finance) committees is associated with financial reporting quality and fiscal policies in the municipal setting. The evidence shows that municipalities with financial oversight committees have higher quality financial reporting and fiscal policies in line with voter preferences. Specifically, we find that both audit and finance committees are associated with fewer internal control problems. Moreover, municipalities with audit committees have higher quality external disclosure, are less likely to experience fiscal deficits, and more likely to finance municipal operations with locally raised revenues rather than by issuing new debt. The latter findings are consistent with municipal audit committees serving a more expansive role than that of monitoring the financial reporting function. Overall, our findings suggest that audit and finance committees function as substitute mechanisms with respect to internal control quality, and as independent mechanisms in terms of external disclosure and fiscal policies.