Paul Posner [1947 – July 5, 2017] was director of the George Mason University’s Scar School of Policy and Government (2005-2017) and made valuable contributions to understanding the budgetary aspects of federalism. He authored The Politics of Unfunded Mandates (1998) which received the 2008 Martha Derthick Best Book Award given by Section on Federalism and Intergovernmental Management of the American Political Science Association, from which also he received their Daniel J. Elazar Distinguished Scholar award (2017). Numerous articles and reports included the 2001 Burkhead award-winning article in Public Budgeting & Finance. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and worked for the New York City budget bureau. He served for 30 years with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, where he achieved leadership positions. He was a former president of the ASPA (2010-2011) and ABFM (2000-2001), and a Fellow (1996) and Chair of the Board of the NAPA (2016-2017). He received AABPA’s Blum Award (2005) and ABFM’s Howard Award (2009) and, in his honor, ABFM created in 2018 the Posner Award for a lifetime achievement for significant contributions made to the field of budgeting and financial management as both a practitioner and an academic (2018).