State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington, HD 94) earned a 97% on TFR’s 2025 Fiscal Responsibility Index,¹ one of the strongest scores in the Texas House. His career rating is an A+, with A+ scores in 2015, 2017, and 2023 and A- ratings in 2019 and 2021.

Those grades rest on actual votes in Austin. In 2025 he opposed a larger state budget, rejected Hollywood subsidies, opposed a last-minute pension sweetener for legislators, and backed limits on hostile foreign ownership of Texas land and resources. 

Standing Up to Excessive Government Spending

The 2026–27 budget was another expansion of state government. Comparing adopted budgets, state funds initial appropriations rose about 8 percent from the prior biennium and about 42 percent from 2022–23, faster than population and inflation growth. This means higher tax burdens on hard working Texans, because the more government spends, the more it has to tax.

Tinderholt voted against SB 1² on House third reading. He also backed two bills aimed at waste and bureaucracy. He voted for HB 3770,³ which would have required the Legislative Budget Board to run scheduled efficiency reviews of state agencies and programs and report cost-saving options. He voted for HB 3743,⁴ which would have extended Texas’ existing 11-to-1 staff-to-manager cap to all state agencies. 

Fighting Higher Property Taxes

On property taxes, Tinderholt voted for SB 850,⁵ which streamlines automatic refunds when taxpayers overpay or pay in error, and for SB 1951,⁶ a bill to stop hidden property-tax penalties by requiring clearer notice and removing a financial incentive for appraisal districts to pile those penalties on. He also voted for HB 22,⁷ which ends taxation of intangible personal property such as patents and copyrights.

Protecting Taxpayers From Corporate Welfare

Corporate welfare, where the government picks winners and losers in what is supposed to be a free-market system, continued to find favor among legislators this last session. Tinderholt, however, voted against SB 22,⁸ which created a new state film and television incentive fund. The enrolled bill directs $300 million of taxpayer money from general revenue every two years through 2035—more than $1.5 billion over the life of the program. He also opposed HB 3883,⁹ which would have expanded taxpayer subsidies for the FIA World Endurance Championship, and HB 1268,¹⁰ a new state grant stacked on top of federal innovation awards at a cost of nearly $2 million in the first two years. 

All of which was paid for by the Texas taxpayer. 

Texas Land, Local Debt, and Legislator Perks

Tinderholt supported and voted for SB 17,¹¹ which bars governments, companies, and individuals tied to hostile designated countries, including China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, from buying or otherwise acquiring Texas real property and related natural-resource interests. That is a property-rights and national-security vote, not a spending earmark, and it keeps Texas land out of the control of those who threaten Texas families.

He also voted for HB 103,¹² which would put local government debt, tax rates, and bond projects in a statewide online database. Taxpayers cannot police borrowing and taxes in their communities if they cannot see it. 

Late in the session he voted against the conference committee report on SB 293,¹³ a crooked bill that raised legislator pensions and let the Texas Ethics Commission raise those pensions again every five years starting in 2030, all at taxpayer expense. 

An Example of What Taxpayers Actually Want 

Taken together, the record is straightforward. Tinderholt has voted to slow spending, make property taxes less burdensome, stop taxpayer money from going to big, private corporations, ban hostile foreign buyers from scooping up Texas land, and refuse a quiet raise in lawmaker pensions. 

And although Tinderholt is not seeking reelection to the Texas House, his record is the standard taxpayers want and expect, and the standard they should use when they judge the next legislative session.

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1. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/legislators/tony-tinderholt/2025-index ↩︎
2. https://journals.house.texas.gov/HJRNL/89R/HTML/89RDAY42FINAL.HTM ↩︎
3. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv767 ↩︎
4. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv1629 ↩︎
5. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv3861 ↩︎
6. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv3040 ↩︎
7. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv73 ↩︎
8. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv3545 ↩︎
9. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv1409 ↩︎
10. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv223 ↩︎
11. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv1881 ↩︎
12. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv749 ↩︎
13. https://index.texastaxpayers.com/votes/2025-house-vote-rv4171 ↩︎