Josh Rowan, Who Helped Transform Oakland, Is Out as City Transportation Head
Just a day after Mayor Barbara Lee held a press conference claiming a reelection mandate, it appears she’s already shaking up City Hall.
City of Oakland staff were notified Friday of major changes in the city’s executive leadership as Josh Rowan, the transportation department director since spring of 2024, was replaced on an interim basis by Megan Wier, the department’s assistant director.
Chuck Baker, who was appointed assistant city administrator in December, is also out, as is HR head Mary Hao, who had been in her role since February 2024, according to the internal email.
In the message sent to staff on Friday afternoon, the city administrator’s office announced that Weir would become acting head of OakDOT, Lauren Moeslein would become acting head of the Department of Workplace Employment Standards, and Andrea Mariano would become acting head of the Human Resources Management Department.
“Each of these City leaders brings years of experience to these positions, and we thank them for rising to these new roles,” the message said. “We thank Assistant City Administrator Chuck Baker, OakDOT Director Josh Rowan, and HRMD Director Mary Hao for their service, and look forward to a smooth transition.”
The Oaklandside has reached out to Rowan and OakDOT for comment but we have not heard back yet. Baker and Hao were not immediately reachable.
Rowan has had an eventful few years in Oakland. He has expanded the city’s bike lanes, built up road-slowing infrastructure and tackled an ambitious plan for paving Oakland’s deteriorated roads. He also encountered a lot of frustrated Oakland residents.
Early in his tenure, he convinced residents of the San Antonio neighborhood to stop illegally placing tires on the road to halt speeders. Later, he oversaw a contentious series of community meetings in Rockridge over how to slow traffic there. Over time, though improvements were slowed thanks to delayed bond sales, many Oakland residents came to see him as a person who got things done.
But earlier this year, Rowan became embroiled in an internal turf war inside City Hall, as the city’s finance department sought to take over parking functions from the transportation department.
Then, in July, Rowan filed several complaints against members of the administration, related to his removal as the acting director of Public Works, a post he held from late 2024 through the end of 2025, and his concerns over how contracts were awarded.
Before he came to Oakland, Rowan was a construction executive who left the private sector to enter public service in Atlanta. As the general manager of a bond program there, he raised millions of dollars for infrastructure projects. He went onto become Atlanta’s transportation director, where he led big projects under then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, now Georgia’s governor elect, and then deputy director of MARTA, the area’s public transit agency, before taking the job in Oakland.
This is the second time that Megan Wier will serve as OakDOT’s acting director. Before Rowan took the job in 2024, she led the team for a few months after Fred Kelley left his post to take over the city’s Parks, Recreation & Youth Development Department. She became assistant director of the department in 2022 after two years managing the department’s Safe Streets Division. Previously, she worked on the safe streets-focused Vision Zero project at the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Wier takes over the department just as it turns 10. The department was launched in 2016 to allow the city to engage in more focused management of its roads, which were in disrepair due to generations of disinvestment. Since then, the city has paved more roads than at any time in its history, with more than 200 miles in the last six years alone.
OakDOT has prioritized upgrades in underserved communities using an Equity Paving Index, analyzed collision data to identify and prioritize traffic-slowing measures in high-injury corridors, and developed a Slow Streets program that closed off certain streets from car traffic during the pandemic to make it safer for residents to walk and bike.
KQED is a media partner of The Oaklandside, a news outlet serving Oakland, published by the nonprofit Cityside Journalism Initiative.