Danny Wan

Danny Wan (born 1963) was a member of the Oakland City Council from 2000 to 2005 becoming the city’s first openly gay politician.^[1]

Biography

Wan was born in Taiwan prior to immigrating with his family to California. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley and his law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1993, he was admitted to the California State Bar.^[1][2]

Career

For years, Wan worked as a public school teacher, and in private law practice at Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, then at Foley & Lardner, specializing in municipal financing and securities disclosure, and as a member of the board of directors for the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD).^[1][3][4][5]

In 1999, the city council appointed Wan to represent District 2, an area that encompasses neighborhoods in Chinatown, San Antonio and Lake Merritt, when its representative John Russo was elected city attorney and vacated his post. Wan was subsequently elected in 2002. He served until 2005 at which point he resigned from the council, citing the need to support financially his parents, for which the income he was receiving from the city could not cover. His elderly father at the time had not yet retired from driving for AC Transit, the city’s bus system. Wan left the city council for the Port of Oakland as its new deputy attorney.^[1]

During his five-year tenure in the city council, Wan succeeded in initiating, leading and implementing a number of initiatives that strengthened the city’s fiscal status, its physical infrastructure and its social programs, especially those targeting vulnerable communities:

• He is credited for revamping the city's budget process, balancing it while protecting basic city services like community policing and affordable housing, and making it more inclusive of public input^[1][3]
• He authored and spearheaded Measure DD, passed in 2002, a $198 million bond that fixed Lake Merritt and the Oakland Estuary. The measure dramatically improved both water quality and public access to the lake after construction began in 2006. Among its results, it established Splashpad Park and renovated Children’s Fairyland. The bond continues to this day to fund major public work projects particularly with park space improvements^[1][6][7][8]
• He authored Oakland’s “Equal Access to Services” ordinance which required the hiring of bilingual staff, if needed, to support immigrant communities, and the translation of city government and legal information into major non-English languages spoken by the city’s residents, currently Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese^[1][9]
• He supported funding of on-site after-school programs^[1]
• He advocated for the city’s LGBT community, including bringing Oakland Pride celebrations for the first time into the city^[1][10]

Wan was replaced by his chief of staff Pat Kernighan who was elected into the post in 2005 in a special election.

He later worked as the City Attorney for Morgan Hill, California and later re-appointed by the Port of Oakland as its chief general counsel. Additionally, he continues to serve Oakland as a member of its Budget Advisory Commission, leading efforts such as the transportation bond Measure KK that was passed overwhelmingly by voters in 2016, and as a community and environmental activist, with the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance, and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, where he was appointed to the board by the California governor in 2016.^{[9][11][12][13][5][14][15]}

References