Paul's Biography

A native Houstonian and Texas A&M graduate, Republican Paul Bettencourt was elected in 1998 to fill the unexpired term of the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector and Voter Registrar and the last countywide Democratic officeholder in the nation's third most populous county which includes the City of Houston, the Nation's 4th largest city. 

Voters have since re-elected Bettencourt twice to oversee an office that handles nearly $5 billion in annual tax receipts and manages a database of more than 7.5 million records.

Bettencourt followed a Democrat who had been in office for more than 50 years and immediately went to work modernizing an office that, as late as 1998, was still using manual typewriters in daily operations and relying on a stale office culture.

As a result of Bettencourt’s results-oriented leadership, the Harris County Tax Office was transformed into a nationally recognized model of efficiency. Using his personal theme of a “smart government” philosophy, Bettencourt overhauled tax collections and vehicle registrations. He urged residents to “get online, not in line” by moving the bureaucracy into the digital age with innovative web-based services and computerization efforts.

Over 540 Million Dollars have been collected from taxpayers using E-Government since the tax office website went into action in 2000, and now 200,000 taxpayers each year register their vehicles on-line through the system the Tax Office first piloted for Texas.

As Voter Registrar he maintains a voter roll of 1.9 Million, while scrubbing voter rolls of felons and deceased registrations and making registration easier for those who move in the County. He established a high-tech telephone bank and computer response system to use on Election Day. During the 2004 Presidential Election, his office handled more than 51,000 calls from voters needing assistance and did so with an average response time of four seconds. He has testified about voter fraud both in the state and nationally. 

Bettencourt accomplished all of this with fewer employees than his predecessor and while keeping the Tax Office budget with-in three percent of the same level he was given upon taking office almost a decade ago.

Bettencourt was also the first elected official in Texas to frame the local and statewide political debate about skyrocketing property taxes. Bettencourt didn’t just talk about the problem. His consistent leadership and unquestioned expertise transformed it into a decisive public policy issue that Paul debates in forums across the State, and has testified to the Texas Legislature since 1999 on public policy issues.

In 2004, Bettencourt received more than 58 percent of the votes cast, making his the highest vote-getter in Harris County. He received 24,000 more votes than President George W. Bush, the former Texas governor, on his way to winning a second term in the White House.

Bettencourt was also one of the conservative political heavyweights who backed a 2005 statewide constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man one women. He was a vocal supporter of the measure which won with 76 percent of the vote statewide and nearly 66% in the City of Houston.

Bettencourt has also been a steady hand for Harris County during times of crisis. When Houston opened it arms to scores of those fleeing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Bettencourt helped lead a massive relief effort under Judge Robert Eckels as the county liaison to joint city-county command structure. His office also did damage assessments when Hurricane Rita hit the region in the midst of the effort to help those who had fled Katrina. Judge Eckels, Paul Bettencourt, Mayor Bill White and other officals were all instrumental in identifying and organizing an immediate response to a potentially serious interruption to a major portion of the City of Houston’s water supply capability post Hurricane Katrina. 

Before taking elected office, Bettencourt worked at Asea Brown-Boveri Industrial Systems (ABB), where he served as vice president of sales and also director of sales and marketing for ABB’s Chemical Oil and Gas Division. In that role, he oversaw an annual sales budget of $100 million. Immediately prior to his election as Tax Assessor-Collector, Bettencourt worked as a successful business consultant.

Bettencourt earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Distribution from Texas A& M University’s College of Engineering. He and his wife Susan have two children, Christina and Henry. They are active members of Saint John Vianney Catholic Church.