Gary Bass

Gary D. Bass became the executive director of the Bauman Foundation in July 2011. Prior to that, he founded and for 28 years directed OMB Watch, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that promotes greater government accountability and transparency and increased citizen participation in public policy decisions. An expert on federal budgetary, program management, regulatory and information policy issues, Dr. Bass has published extensively, testified before Congress, appeared on national television and presented to groups across the country. Specific areas of expertise include his understanding of the apparatus of government, particularly the executive branch of the federal government, and ways of strengthening nonprofit advocacy. Dr. Bass is a strong advocate for strengthening government transparency and using newer information technologies to empower citizens and community groups to challenge unchecked institutional power. In 2006, he successfully championed passage of a law that required the government to create a searchable website providing information about government spending. At the same time, OMB Watch launched FedSpending.org, which has proven invaluable to journalists, public interest organizations and citizens looking for information on trillions of dollars in government spending. The federal government licensed the FedSpending.org software to build its mandated USAspending.gov. And back in 1989, Dr. Bass created RTK NET, (the Right-to-Know Network), a free online service that provides the public access to government environmental data, including the Toxics Release Inventory. With the rapid increase in government secrecy following September 11, 2001, Dr. Bass has spoken out against the erosion of the public’s right to know. He helped form a powerful coalition, OpenTheGovernment.org, that includes journalists and advocates who are pursuing more democracy and less secrecy. Since then he led a “transpartisan” effort to present detailed recommendations to the incoming Obama administration for improving government openness, which senior White House aides called a “blueprint” for the administration. Dr. Bass has led many advocacy campaigns – often in coalition with local, state and national groups – in pursuit of a government that promotes social justice and responds to community needs. He led OMB Watch in challenging a number of provisions in the Contract with America and successfully stopped proposals that would have undermined our society's safety net. Working with a wide variety of public interest organizations, he stopped: a "no money, no mandates" measure that would have resulted in state and local governments being exempted from complying with federal laws; a constitutional amendment to balance the U.S. budget that would have seriously harmed human service delivery; a variety of regulatory provisions that would have undermined health, safety and environmental protections; and various effort to silence the advocacy voice of charities across the country. At the Bauman Foundation, he remains active, both as a grantmaker and advocate, in efforts to stop the assault on federal regulations, promote government transparency to strengthen accountability, increase federal revenues, and encourage civic participation. Dr. Bass is also an affiliated professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy and also teaches in the Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate program at Georgetown's Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership. He has served on numerous boards and has been an advisor to many organizations including the Advocacy Evaluation Project at Innovation Network, The Arc, Center for American Progress' Making Government Work Project, Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest, Coalition on Human Needs, Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University's Washington College of Law, Economic Policy Institute, Hampshire Research Institute, Loka Institute, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Nonprofit Vote, OpentheGovernment.org, Pew Charitable Trusts' SubsidyScope, and the Science and Environment Health Network. And he has served on many panels and advisory bodies, including as a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States and as a fellow with the National Academy of Public Administration. Dr. Bass has received various awards for his leadership in the nonprofit sector and for his actions to make government more transparent. For example, 10 times over a period of 12 years he was selected as one of the Nonprofit Times Power and Influence Top 50. One of the awards noted, "Nobody is better at divining what legislative fine print means to the charitable sector, getting the translation out to leadership and rallying advocacy. Nothing slips by him. Nothing." Prior to founding OMB Watch, Dr. Bass was president of the Human Services Information Center where he wrote two books and numerous articles on human services issues and published the Human Services INSIDER, a bimonthly newsletter on the politics of federal human services programs. He also served as director of liaison for the International Year of Disabled Persons; worked as a consultant on several projects in special education and the mental health of children and youth, most notably the preparation of the first annual report to Congress on the implementation of the Education of All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142), now called the Individuals with Disability Education Act; and served as special assistant to Wilbur Cohen, then chair of the Michigan Governor's Task Force on the Investigation and Prevention of Abuse in Residential Institutions. Dr. Bass received a combined doctorate in psychology and education from The University of Michigan, along with the University's highest award for graduate student teaching and several awards for academic excellence.

Education

• University of Michigan-Ann Arbor - Ph.D.
• University of Michigan-Ann Arbor - M.A.
• University of Michigan-Ann Arbor - B.A.