The Greater Houston Partnership held its 2016 annual meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center earlier Monday. Partnership leaders used the occasion to highlight the business group’s policy goals for the year ahead.
The Partnership spent much of last year trying to draw attention to the city’s mounting public pension debt. That will remain a top priority of Houston Texans’ president Jamey Rootes, who took the gavel as the partnership’s chairman for 2016.
“The facts are clear,” Rootes said. “This is a mounting problem that will have a significant impact on our long-term economic growth if we don’t act with a sense of urgency.” Rootes said the business group will work with Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner in trying to solve the problem.
Meanwhile, Partnership CEO Bob Harvey acknowledged the group had fallen short on some of its policy priorities in 2015, notably its effort to preserve Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance.
“With or without a new city ordinance,” Harvey said, “the business community of Houston, the city that prides itself on diversity and openness and inclusivity, cannot and hopefully will not accept discrimination in our city against any group, and that includes the gay and transgender communities.”
Harvey also said that, in the year ahead, the Greater Houston Partnership will redouble its efforts on K-12 public school reform and on criminal justice reform.