The clock is ticking for House Speaker Dade Phelan and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to come to an agreement amid continued debate over the delivery of property tax relief to home and businesses owners.

Last week, the House passed an amended version of Senate Bill 3 – legislation that addresses the $16.3 billion proposal to cut property taxes. Revisions on the bill would boost the homestead exemption to $100,000 to all homeowners and $110,000 for those who are 65 years of age and older.

If approved it would also distribute $12 million to Texas school districts, which was included in the original House’s proposal.

What remains the same in this version of SB 3 is the House's call for lowering the state’s appraisal cap from 10 percent to 5 percent for all homeowners and expanding it to commercial businesses.

The increase of the homestead exemption, which doubles the initial amount proposed by the Senate, could be seen as a sign of compromise between the speaker and the lieutenant governor as it is one of Patrick’s priorities for tax cuts.

However, the House is still unwilling to drop its inclusion of appraisal caps in the revised legislation.

Bob Stein, Rice University political science professor, said this is where issues arise as Patrick is “fundamentally opposed” to appraisal caps and Phelan strongly supports them.

This opposition has created a stalemate between the speaker and the lieutenant governor.

Patrick’s stance on appraisal values changed from just two sessions ago when he first came to the Senate as a proponent of these caps – announcing he was their “big champion,” Stein said.

According to Stein, the sudden shift in support may be due to real estate lobbyists advising Patrick who are “pretty panicked” about limiting appraisal caps which could tighten the housing market.

People may be incentivized to not sell their house because they’ve owned it for a while, and they don’t want to give up the tax break. This could put the market in stagnation, making new available housing limited and what property is available more expensive.

“My suspicions are that there are lobbyists that represent the real estate industry, who genuinely believe that putting a lower cap – reducing the rate at which property valuations can increase for the purposes of taxes – is detrimental to the housing market,” he said.

Although this is a possibility, Stein said he believes the lowering of the appraisal cap that Phelan is proposing will likely not have this effect. Mainly because as currently Texas does not have a housing shortage, as more homes and apartments are being built to cater to the state’s growing populations.

Senate Bill 3 is back in the Senate pending approval of the changes made in the House. If legislators do not pass the bill with the adjustments, it will go to a conference committee.

The proposed legislation must be in conference committee by Friday or otherwise the only chance to pass would be if Governor Greg Abbott placed the bill under consideration during a special session.

Stein said because Abbot is already signaling a special session for one of his main legislative priorities, school vouchers, it is highly unlikely that both could be taken to session – but not impossible.

“It’s hard to believe that they couldn’t settle this and compromise, I thought this would have been an easy sell, but my money is that the lieutenant governor is the more stubborn one than Phelan," he said. “Patrick pretty much controls the Senate, Phelan is a little more loosey, goosey, which tells me he is not in a good position to bargain either.”

Stein said he could see a compromise between the two leaders that results in a slightly higher appraisal cap than the 5 percent proposed, and a lower amount of money returned to the homeowner.

“This fight isn’t between the parties, it’s not even between a few people, this is one that seems solely at this point focused on two things, the speaker and the lieutenant governor and the different focus of the two legislative bodies.”