Tarrant County Families Got Results They Can Measure. Here’s the Record.

Cost of living is not an Austin talking point. It is groceries, rent, the mortgage, insurance, and the tax bill that lands once a year. Views & News Tarrant County edition walks through who protected Texans from a state income tax, who cut local rates while funding deputies, who grew the homestead exemption, and who is drawing a line on data centers next to neighborhoods.

They voted against banning a Texas income tax. Now they want your vote.

Texas has no personal income tax. In 2019 voters approved a constitutional ban unless the Constitution is changed again—nearly three to one. Getting that amendment on the ballot first required two-thirds in both chambers. The House passed it 100–42. The Senate passed it 22–9.

The Democrats now topping the statewide ticket all voted no: Gina Hinojosa (governor), Vikki Goodwin (lieutenant governor), and Nathan Johnson (attorney general).

A record is not a slogan. When people show you who they are, believe them.

Tarrant County cut taxes and did not cut safety

Under County Judge Tim O’Hare and the Republican majority on Commissioners Court, Tarrant County adopted first-ever homestead exemptions at the full 20 percent state law allows—for both the county and the hospital district. One-fifth of a home’s taxable value is now off those two bills.

The county property tax rate dropped 17 percent over three years. The hospital district rate dropped 26.5 percent. Both were set below the no-new-revenue line each year. Existing homeowners are paying less even as new construction grows the tax base.

The savings came from canceled or scaled-back capital projects, less travel spending, and tighter controls on hours not worked—not from gutting core services.

Public safety expanded in the same window: a new law enforcement training center, deputy and officer pay raises, body-worn cameras, and specialized units for narcotics, human trafficking, cold cases, and auto theft. Mental health diversion, youth mentorship, school-based prevention, video magistrates, and services for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities all grew.

The test for swing voters is simple. Can local government cut taxes without cutting safety? Tarrant County’s last three years are a data point that says yes.

Your home’s biggest tax break keeps growing because one side kept fighting for it

When Democrats last ran the legislature before 2002, the homestead exemption was $15,000. That was not relief.

After Republicans won both chambers and statewide offices in 2002, they repeatedly put larger exemptions on the ballot. Voters said yes, over and over. In November 2025 they raised the exemption to $140,000 for every homeowner, plus another $60,000 for seniors and Texans with disabilities—up to $200,000 shielded from school district property taxes.

Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick have already put more property tax cuts on the table for 2027. The years before 2002 produced no comparable break. That is the record, forward or backward.

Data centers need guardrails. Neighborhoods deserve a voice.

A large data center proposed in Westlake sits just over 200 feet from homes in Keller’s Marshall Ridge neighborhood. Keller has asked Westlake for the same roughly 1,200-yard buffer Westlake gives its own residents. Neighbors have a temporary restraining order and a lawsuit while they wait for answers on noise, water, the grid, and setbacks.

Fort Worth’s City Council voted unanimously for a 90-day pause on new data centers, stood up a Data Center & Infrastructure Commission, and required PUC and ERCOT interconnection proof. The council tied that vote to Governor Abbott’s statewide audit. Abbott directed the PUCT and ERCOT to keep data center connections from raising residential bills, make data centers pay for their own infrastructure, and deny connection to projects that fail a queue-wide audit. ERCOT is looking at more than 474 gigawatts of requests—over five times Texas’ record peak—about 90 percent from data centers.

Lieutenant Governor Patrick made data centers an interim charge and called for a 10-month pause so the Legislature can write water-efficient cooling rules, reporting requirements, setbacks, and noise standards. Both leaders want outdated sales-tax exemptions repealed. A typical modern facility’s permanent staff is often a few dozen to about 100 people—not the job factory pitch from a decade ago.

Leigh Wambsganss, Republican candidate for Senate District 9, is the only candidate in that race who publicly backed Marshall Ridge residents at Westlake meetings. Her line: not opposed to data centers; opposed to building them next to homes and schools.

Republicans wrote the laws that protect women and girls

House Bill 25 (2021) put K–12 public school sports on biological sex. Senate Bill 15 extended that rule to public colleges. Senate Bill 8, the Texas Women’s Privacy Act, requires government restrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas to be designated by biological sex; houses inmates by biological sex; and keeps state-funded all-female domestic violence shelters for biological women and their children. Abbott signed the bills. SB 8 took effect December 4, 2025.

Republicans authored and passed them. Most Democratic legislators voted no. SB 8 cleared the Senate 19–11 and the House roughly 86–45.

Those votes also show up on other measures listed in the edition: the 2019 income-tax ban, a 2021 cap on state spending growth, voter approval before certain counties cut law-enforcement funding, 2025 election-integrity penalties, and women’s sports.

Tarrant County voters guide (non-federal)

Recommended Republican candidates include Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Mayes Middleton, Don Huffines, Dawn Buckingham, Nate Sheets, Bo French, Carlos (Charlie) Garza (SBOE 13), David Cook (SD 22), Leigh Wambsganss (SD 9), House members David Lowe, JP Woodruff, Alan Blaylock, Cheryl Bean, Ellen Fleischmann, John McQueeney, Armin Mizani, and Charlie Geren, County Judge Tim O’Hare, Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells, District Clerk Thomas Wilder, County Clerk Mary Louise Nicholson, Commissioners Tony Tinderholt and Manny Ramirez, plus the listed Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, appellate, district, county criminal, and justice of the peace candidates.

The edition’s standard is results you can check: tax bills that went down, exemptions that went up, deputies who were funded, neighborhoods that got a voice, and laws that kept girls’ sports and private spaces intact. That is the record on the table this fall.