About Mark Funkhouser

Mark Funkhouser is a municipal finance and government performance expert who has spent decades in public service.

As the mayor of Kansas City during the Great Recession, Mark made the tough choices to put his city on the path to fiscal sustainability and focused on “smart with the money” policy approaches to make the city work for regular people. As the publisher of Governing magazine, Mark continued his commitment to good government through promoting innovation and peer learning across state and local jurisdictions.

In 2019, he founded Funkhouser & Associates, a consulting firm that supports the work of local governments and their partners through engagement, strategic planning, capacity development and fiscal analysis. 

Mark is the founder of the International Center for Performance Auditing (ICPA) and a founding member of the Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA). He previously spent 18 years with the Office of the City Auditor of Kansas City and 10 years with the Tennessee Division of State Audit. He has dedicated his career, research and writing to advancing the public sector performance auditing profession and strengthening its real-world impact.

Mark holds a master’s degree in social work from West Virginia University, an M.B.A. from Tennessee State University, and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in public administration and urban sociology from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.