David Ammons is a distinguished professor emeritus of public administration in the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1996-2021) and the leading authority on local government performance management built on a career in both academia and practice. He received his B.A. from Texas Tech University (1971), MPA from Texas Christian University (1973), and Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma (1983). His local government employment in management analysis and budgeting was with the cities of Fort Worth, Texas (1972), Hurst, Texas (1973-1974), Phoenix, Arizona (1974-1975), and Oak Ridge, Tennessee (1975-1977). He was on the faculty of the University of North Texas (1983-1987) before joining the Institute of Government at the University of Georgia (1987-1996) and then the faculty of UNC’s School of Government (1996-2021) where he was instrumental in creating the North Carolina benchmarking project. He was a member (2018-2022) and Vice Chair (2021) of the North Carolina Governor’s Advisory Committee on Performance Management. Significant service activities include the National Performance Advisory Commission (2008-2009), ASPA’s National Council (2004-2007), NASPAA’s executive council (2012-2015), and ICMA’s Credentialing Advisory Board (2021-2024). Recognitions include NAPA Fellow (2006), ASPA’s Wholey Award for work on public sector performance (2014, 2020), and ASPA’s Stone Scholar Award (2022). Along with numerous articles on local government management are books including ICMA’s Leading Performance Management in Local Government (2008), Municipal Benchmarks (2012), Performance Measurement for Managing Local Government (2020), and Tools for Decision Makers (2002, now in third edition).