Mark Tisdel keeps getting bills passed in a gridlocked Lansing.
The Rochester Hills state rep's record, with the receipts. A two-minute read that runs a little long, because the record does.
Quick civics check: who is your state representative? If you would have to look it up, you are normal. Most people in Rochester Hills could not pick theirs out of a lineup, and usually that is fine, because most state legislators do not do much worth knowing about.
This one is different, and we can show you why.
His name is Mark Tisdel. He has lived in Rochester Hills since 1989. Before politics he spent 22 years running an insurance business, sang as a cantor at St. Andrew, and served eight years on the Rochester Hills City Council, four of them as president. A fairly standard-issue neighbor, in other words.
What is not standard is his batting average in Lansing.
First, some context
Michigan's government is split. Republicans run the House by six seats, Democrats run the Senate by one, and the governor is a Democrat. In that arrangement almost nothing becomes law, and most legislators have adjusted by filming content and waiting for the next election.
Tisdel's bills keep passing anyway. And not the symbolic kind. Laws you have probably already heard about.
The phone law
If you have a kid in school, you know this one. Tisdel wrote the law that gets phones out of Michigan classrooms during instruction time, kindergarten through 12th grade, starting this fall. It passed the House 99 to 10, cleared the Senate, and Governor Whitmer signed it in February. Teachers had been asking for years. He is the one who got it done.
Your taxes
Tisdel chairs the House Finance Committee, which means he helped write this year's state budget. That budget ended Michigan income tax on tips, on overtime, and on Social Security. It also set a record for per-pupil school funding, and the total still came in smaller than last year's. Those three things do not usually appear in the same sentence.
It is not a new habit. When gas prices spiked in 2022, he pushed to suspend the state gas tax too.
The roads deal
In 2025 he helped land the $1.85 billion road funding agreement between the House, the Senate, and the governor. That is the deal Lansing had been failing to make for roughly a decade.
Named Legislator of the Year four times in four years, by four different organizations.
Small business
In his first year, he wrote the law that lets Michigan small businesses work around the federal SALT cap, tax relief reaching some 200,000 of them. Then he kept going: a paperwork-cutting measure for manufacturers, a tax-collection fix on heavy rental equipment written with Democrat Jim Ellison of Royal Oak, and a 2023 tax cut on delivery and installation charges.
He ran a business for 22 years, and it shows in how he writes tax policy.
Online scammers
His 2022 consumer protection law requires high-volume third-party sellers on online marketplaces to identify themselves, which took the anonymity out of reselling stolen goods. It has been protecting Michigan shoppers since the first day of 2023.
Money coming home
With a Democrat, Rep. Amos O'Neal of Saginaw, he led the push that created the Revenue Sharing Trust Fund, which sends a dedicated share of state sales tax back to local governments for police, parks, and roads.
Closer to home, he secured $500,000 in state money that helped build Innovation Hills, helped land $75 million for brownfield cleanup, $1.3 million to preserve the Cloverport green space, funding to stabilize the Clinton River bank, a clean drinking water grant for Rochester Hills, and cleanup of an old landfill lot. He also pushed for a 19 percent funding increase for Oakland University and more for Oakland Community College.
Committee work nobody claps for
Some of what the Finance Committee does will never make a headline, which does not make it less useful. It expanded 529 college savings deductions for Michigan families. It expanded tax help for living organ donors, part of a multi-year effort that moved Michigan's living-donor grade from an F to a B. And it blocked an estimated $540 million hit to the state budget when federal tax changes threatened to punch a hole in it.
The fight he keeps picking
Michigan has some of the weakest government transparency laws in the country. The Legislature and the governor's office are largely exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, which is not how it works for your city council.
Tisdel has spent his entire time in office trying to change that: bills to open the Legislature and the governor's office to FOIA, to require financial disclosure from officials, and to ban legislators from cashing out as lobbyists the day they leave. Most of it has not passed, because the people who would have to pass it are the people it applies to. He keeps introducing it anyway.
Still on his desk
A few more he keeps pushing: incentives for safe firearm storage, a school safety and student mental health package, tougher penalties for abusing seniors and vulnerable adults, faster licensing so professionals moving in from other states can get to work, auto insurance reforms so crash victims get consistent care, and, with Sen. Michael Webber, an amendment striking the involuntary-servitude exception that is still sitting in Michigan's constitution.
None of those are laws yet. He keeps reintroducing them anyway, which tells you something about how he picks his fights.
Check the math
Everything above is public record: bill numbers, roll call votes, signing dates. It has also been noticed. Tisdel has been named Legislator of the Year four times in four years, by four different organizations: the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association in 2021, the Small Business Association of Michigan in 2022, the Michigan Retailers Association in 2023, and the Michigan Municipal League in 2024.
And the people who run Lansing keep handing him the hard economic work. When the governor's office needed input on designing Michigan's new jobs incentive program, it went to him, a Republican committee chairman. That same fall, the Republican Speaker of the House gave him the job of overhauling Michigan's entire economic development strategy. His pitch for that overhaul, by the way: stop writing corporations blank checks up front, and pay only for jobs that actually show up.
Endorsed by the people you actually know
Endorsement lists are usually a wall of organization logos. Here is one you can check from memory.
Tisdel is endorsed by Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan Barnett and Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard. He is backed by the leadership of both city councils in the district: Council President Jason Carlock, Vice President Theresa Mungioli, and council members Marvie Neubauer and David Blair in Rochester Hills, along with Nancy Salvia and Stuart Bikson on the Rochester City Council.
That is the mayor, the county sheriff, and elected leaders from both cities he represents, the people who see up close whether a state legislator actually delivers for a community.
The statewide list is long too: the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the Detroit Regional Chamber, NFIB Michigan, the Small Business Association of Michigan, the Michigan Manufacturers Association, the Michigan Retailers Association, the Michigan Farm Bureau, and the Great Lakes Education Project.
Tisdel is on the ballot Tuesday, November 3. In 2022, this seat was decided by fewer than four points. If you feel like helping, you can donate to the campaign.