Across countries, decentralization policies have granted large tax autonomy to subnational government, down to the municipal level. However, existing studies do not address how tax governance dynamics change when elected officials are deeply embedded in the community they govern. In this study, I show that "neighbor politicians" are able to strengthen the fiscal contract, due to their greater knowledge of the local community, access to informal networks, and higher levels of trust by the tax base/electorate. Conversely, my evidence suggests that the likelihood of state capture by local elites and organized crime do not seem to increase with embeddedness. Combining granular administrative data and original survey evidence, I substantiate this argument with evidence from the case of Italian mayors. Through an electoral regression discontinuity design, I show that mayors native to the town increase enforcement expenditure, face lower levels of tax contestation, and are able to increase tax rates and revenue. Similarly, novel survey time series show that native mayors elicit greater trust from the community. Finally, an original survey replicates this finding descriptively, further showing respondents expecting native mayors to hold greater knowledge of the community.