From 1998 to early in 2008, Bettencourt was the Tax Assessor-Collector of his native Harris County, the third largest county in the United States. In that capacity, he established a website that included on-line tax bills and the first on-line automobile registration and property tax payment plan in Texas. Under his management, the number of taxing jurisdictions served by the Assessor's office increased from forty-four to sixty-five. He kept the same $25 million budget throughout his decade in office. Bettencourt is known as "The Tax Man" for his work as Assessor-Collector and his push to lower property tax rates. Bettencourt was elected in 1998 as the first-ever Republican Tax Assessor-Collector in Harris County's history, serving ten years in total. By 2000, his Voter Registration Department had scrubbed the voter rolls of 50,000 deceased and felon voter registrations, of which 500 actually had someone still voting in 1994, 1996, and 1998 elections. In 2002, Bettencourt's office released an audit of the 2001 City of Houston elections showing 2,098 people voting illegally in those elections. While automating voter registration procedures, Bettencourt won reelection in 2000, 2004, and 2008, and set the highest record vote total, 607,085, in a contested major party race of any Republican office holder to date for Harris County in 2004. The Democratic Party and plaintiffs filed suit and requested a temporary restraining order against the Voter Registrar Bettencourt after the 2008 election, asking a Federal Judge to block the counting of 7000+ provisional ballots from the November 2008 election. However, the temporary restraining order was denied by the Judge. All 7000+ provisional ballots were reviewed by Election Officials, and either rejected or accepted and then electronically counted. Soon after he won a third term in the 2008 general election over a retired educator, Democrat Diane Trautman, Bettencourt resigned from office. He announced after Thanksgiving Day that he would instead launch Bettencourt Tax Advisors, LLC, through which he has continued a fight for lower property taxes for residential and commercial customers in Houston and statewide. Trautman questioned the timing of Bettencourt's decision, and asked the Harris County Commissioners Court to consider her as his successor. The Commissioners Court, by a four-to-one margin, instead chose the Hispanic businessman Leo Vasquez to fill Bettencourt's seat until a special election could be held in 2010.
Bettencourt ran for the Texas State Senate in 2014 again enlisted the help of top Republican Strategist Allen Blakemore. In the Senate race, Bettencourt carried the support of former Harris County Republican chairmen Gary M. Polland and Jared Woodfill as well as Richard J. Trabulsi, Jr., the chairman of the political action committee, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, and pastor Rick Scarbough of Vision America. After victory in a contested primary on March 4, 2014, Bettencourt won his Senate seat with 123,416 votes in the general election held on November 4, 2014. A Democratic candidate, Jim Davis, trailed with 45,162 votes, and a Libertarian held the remaining 1.9 percent of the ballots cast.
Tenure
Bettencourt's District 7 encompasses parts of Houston and these smaller Harris County communities: Bunker Hill Village, Hedwig Village, Hunters Creek Village, Jersey Village, Piney Point Village, Spring, and Tomball. The district is so Republican that voters by a ten-to-one margin chose the Republican primary election on March 4, 2014, rather than the Democratic slate. Bettencourt said that he will work in the Senate to keep down property taxes. In the special legislative session in 2017, Bettencourt, the chairman of the newly-established Senate Select Committee on Government Reform, introduced legislation to limit the ability of local government in Texas to raise property assessments for property tax purposes. Bettencourt's bill was backed by GovernorGreg Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, but opposed by local officials who said the legislation would impair the ability of cities, counties, and special districts to pay for services but would net little tax relief to individual homeowners. Bettencourt has also warned of serious pension liability problems in Texas and has proposed long-term market-based reforms which he claims will not impact those nearing retirement and have already paid significantly into the pension systems.
2018 reelection
Bettencourt won reelection to the state Senate in 2018, despite the overall Democratic sweep of Harris County. He polled 177,668 votes to 123,994 ballots for the Democrat David Romero. Another 5,866 votes went to the Libertarian Party choice, Tom Glass.
Tenure
He authored a bill that the Texas Senate passed on May 2, 2019 that would move bond, debt and tax elections to November where voter turnout is higher and the bill also places a limit on the wording length of propositions explaining the purposes of a bond election.
