THE TRUTH MATTERS
Mitch Little has not stopped lying.
From his very first campaign communications, Mitch and his PACs, campaign surrogates, and Twitter followers have told lies continually about Kronda Thimesch. The lies are so outlandish and so offensive, that many voters assume they must be true... because how could a church friend behave this way? This page is a resource for voters and supporters to help find the truth, and then debunk the lies.
Click the lie below to learn THE TRUTH:
The lie: "Kronda Thimesch voted against $8 billion in additional property tax relief for Texans."
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Level of falsehood: Complete and total.
This one is fabricated out of whole cloth. A letter sent to HD-65 residents, signed by Sara Gonzales and paid for by Texans United for a Conservative Majority, aka Texas Scorecard, aka Defend Texas Liberty PAC, aka Texas Family Project, makes this false claim, as does a recent text sent to HD-65 voters featured one-term-legislator and Jonathan Stickland-protege Jeff Cason.
These messages claim that House Bill 2, Amendment 1 is their "evidence":
HB 2 was the Republican-priority bill to provide property tax relief to Texans via school district tax compression. In order for Texans to be able to vote on this as a Constitutional Amendment, it first had to be passed by both chambers in the Legislature and then it could go to the voters on the November ballot (where it passed with an astounding 83% of the vote, because Texans needed and deserved real relief).
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First, it would help to know that I was a co-author on this bill along with conservative Republican legislators such as Valoree Swanson, Briscoe Cain, Jared Patterson, Dustin Burrows and dozens of others. And of 143 representatives present in the chamber for that vote, 139 voted for the final bill, including Rep. Tony Tinderholt. That detail becomes pretty significant in just a moment...
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This bill had been months in the making, and was carefully crafted to give Texas taxpayers the greatest possible tax relief as could be delivered thanks to the biennial surplus.
As soon as it was available for debate, Rep. Tinderholt immediately requested an amendment that he quickly admitted was unworkable. You can watch his presentation here, at the House video archives of that April 13, 2023 floor session. Go to the 2:39:11 mark to watch his remarks for yourself.
Rep. Tinderholt himself admits in his amendment speech that HB2 is already a good bill, that he supports it, and that it already provides the largest property tax relief in Texas history. There was no rationale for the amendment offered, no research offered, and no credible fiscal accounting in his amendment; it was an attempt to toss out months of hard work by hundreds of legislators, financial experts and state staffers. Had he been serious, he would have come to the bill's authors with his proposal at the time it was originally being crafted... not in April when the bill had already reached the floor for debate.
There is no proof that this approach would have created $8 billion of additional relief, even if he had gone about it correctly through the legislative process. Rep. Tinderholt was looking for a vehicle to get his political opinion into the record from the floor, not truly trying to improve policy.
More importantly, this amendment could have derailed the entire bill. Per state laws regarding legislative process, there would not have been time to re-work the legislation to fit the amendment's criteria and get it passed, thus you would not have been able to vote on this Constitutional amendment in November 2023 and receive property tax relief.
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There was no additional $8 billion to be had. More importantly, if HB 2 Amendment 1 had not been tabled, Texas homeowners might not have received the 2023 property tax relief at all. Which Tony Tinderholt knew since he happily voted for the bill itself even without his own amendment attached. This was a "gotcha" amendment inserted to serve as future fodder against incumbent state reps.
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Want to know the most ironic part? Guess who joined Tony Tinderholt in voting for his amendment to kill the property tax relief bill?
The three Democrats who had also been trying for days to kill the bill because it didn't give any property tax relief to renters.
So voting with Democrats is okay now?
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