The Standard’s news roundup gives you a quick hit of interesting, sometimes irreverent, and breaking news stories from all over the state.
For what seems to be the first time in its history, the South San Antonio Chamber of Commerce has a board that is primarily made up of women. Sergio Chapa covered the shift in leadership for the San Antonio Business Journal, but he wasn’t even looking for this story.
“It just kind of happened accidentally,” he says. “We just looked at the numbers and goes, huh, that’s kind of interesting there are a lot of women on this board and then we did the analysis, and it turns out women had the majority of the South Chamber, and then the next question was, well what about the other chambers, how do they rank?”
Chambers of commerce help promote local businesses, manage grand openings, and also work in advocacy and education. The South Chamber has 33 board members and now – 18 of them are women – or about 54 percent. Only the West San Antonio Chamber of Commerce tops that – where women make up 64 percent of the board.
Chapa says this is a growing trend – but it isn’t reflected in all of the city’s chambers.
“San Antonio being a Hispanic-majority system, Hispanics are included throughout all of these chambers in town…but the same wasn’t necessarily true for women,” he says. “When you look at the San Antonio Chamber of commerce it has 111 board members but only 30 of them are women. That means only 27 percent of the San Antonio board of directors is female – I mean it’s quite a contrast.”
Chapa adds that more and more women are entering leadership roles within San Antonio’s various chambers of commerce without apparent efforts to recruit them.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was in Fort Worth Monday to talk with members of the agriculture industry. Following President Trump’s call to eliminate two regulations for every new one that gets approved – Cruz wanted to glean which regulations were the biggest pain.
“You look at this mess of regulations – and one of the worst things to do would be if we put all sorts of energy to trying to repeal this particular regulation, and you guys look up and say, ‘Well, you know that wasn’t really that much a problem, and it’s really these two over here that you need to focus your time and energy on,'” Cruz said. “Each of you knows, in your own farms and your own ranches and your own businesses, you know what’s burdening you.”
Cruz also spent several minutes promoting his plan for a ten percent across-the-board flat tax.
The Texas Rangers are on the case of Tom Brady’s missing jersey. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked the rangers to investigate the possible theft after the Patriots Quarterback’s game jersey went missing following Sunday’s Super Bowl in Houston.
Patrick said, “it is important that history does not record that it was stolen in Texas.”
