Dr. Francine Sanders Romero
Dr. Francine Sanders Romero is a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, in the Department of Public Administration, where she also serves as Department Chair. Teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels, her courses have included Public Policy Process, Foundations of Civic Engagement, Policy Analysis, Law and Policy, Administrative Law, and Planning and Land Use Law. She has organized and participated in numerous public engagement events, including a series of Town Hall Meetings presented by UTSA and the San Antonio Express-News. Dr. Romero was inducted into the San Antonio Women’s Hall of Fame, Higher Education category in 2019.
Dr. Romero was selected as the Northwest Quadrant Trustee for the CPS Energy Board of Trustees in the Fall of 2021 and in January 2025 was elected Chair of this governance board of the largest gas and electric public utility in the United States. Through this position, she continues her long record of public service to the community, which includes past terms on the City of San Antonio Planning Commission, Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, Zoning Commission, and Charter Review Commission. She also currently serves as Chair of the City of San Antonio’s Conservation Advisory Board, which makes recommendations to City Council on purchases of land and conservation easements through the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program. To date, that Program has protected nearly 200,000 acres from development in perpetuity, sustaining both the quality and quantity of the City’s primary water source.
Dr. Romero received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Riverside, and a B.A. in Political Science from California State University, San Bernardino. As a scholar, she has focused on the institutional determinants of public policy, with an emphasis on civil rights and land use, as well as policies of the Progressive Era in the United States. In the land use realm, she has authored recent articles in academic journals that consider state and local land use policies in Texas as well as the legal history of zoning challenges in the United States, providing a specific focus on the foundational constitutionality of single-family exclusive zones. Dr. Romero’s book, Not for Sale, focusing on the controversy of eminent domain through the lens of the 2005 Kelo v. New London case will be published in 2025 by University Press of Kansas.