(C) Texas Tribune This story was originally published by Texas Tribune and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Blast - May 5, 2025 [1] ['The Texas Tribune'] Date: 2025-05 7 days until the House committee report soft deadline 10 days until the House bill deadline 28 days until sine die The property tax plan appears to be the second of Abbott’s emergency items to reach a resolution this session after he signed his education savings account program into law on Saturday. Other measures still to come include the bail package and water legislation. “That’s our deal as it currently stands,” Meyer said, referring to this morning’s announcement. The Blast asked Meyer if compression is off the table now. He didn’t give a straight answer. “It’s good across the board for everyone, but it can’t be the major part of your tax cut,” Patrick said in his recent video. In 2023, Patrick dug in his heels against compression while Abbott advocated for a compression-only approach during the Legislature’s first two special sessions that year. The final deal included a smidge of compression. Last month, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told reporters that the final property tax deal would be some blend of homestead exemption, business relief and compression. In a video he posted to social media a few days later, he said the Senate favored the homestead exemption with “just a little compression.” The House and the Senate met in the middle on the business personal property exemption. The House’s plan called for raising the exemption to $250,000 while the Senate’s plan called for a $25,000 exemption, as written in Senate Bill 32 and Senate Joint Resolution 81 . Senate Local Government Committee Chair Paul Bettencourt , R-Dallas, announced in today’s hearing that the two chambers have reached a deal to reduce property taxes. House Ways and Means Committee Chair Morgan Meyer , R-University Park, confirmed the deal minutes later. Another emergency item of Gov. Greg Abbott is coming in for a landing with the announcement of a property tax deal this morning. The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one . LOCAL AND CONSENT IS BACK The House is headed for another temperature check this week that could lead to more fireworks on the dreaded local and consent calendar. Partisan quarreling blew up the House’s local and consent calendar a couple weeks ago. Come Wednesday, the House will try to pass a new set of consent bills in what the House’s conservative bloc see as a test of their resolve. When the House last tried to pass a local and consent calendar two weeks ago, Rep. Tony Tinderholt of Arlington and other Republicans removed a bill by Rep. Mary González, D-Clint, from the consent calendar, beginning a tit for tat that torpedoed the remainder of the consent calendar. The blowup was only 10 days ago, if you can believe it. At the time, Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, posted on social media that House local and consent calendars are dead for the rest of session and that “[Speaker Dustin Burrows’] leadership team has left us no other options than to burn it all down.” In addition to their concerns that leadership hasn’t moved fast enough on conservative priorities, the GOP hardliners want González to pay for her budget amendment that killed several of the test votes they had planned. The local and consent calendar is a key vehicle for moving legislation quickly, especially as the House nears the House bill passage deadline next week. However, the local and consent calendar is ripe for gamesmanship, because it takes only five dissenters to remove a bill from that calendar. Wednesday’s local and consent calendar is relatively short, a little more than two pages. Most of the bills are Republicans’ bills, but González has a shared bill with Local and Consent Calendars Chair Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, House Bill 4464, about halfway down the calendar, and González has the list’s penultimate piece of legislation, House Concurrent Resolution 113. Told that the local and consent calendar includes a couple of González’s measures, Tinderholt’s knee jerk response was, “Uh oh!” However, after reviewing the full calendar, Tinderholt had this to say: [END] --- [1] Url: https://thetexastribune.beehiiv.com/p/the-blast-may-5-2025-ed574481597ffeb1 Published and (C) by Texas Tribune Content appears here under this condition or license: Used with Permission: https://www.texastribune.org/republishing-guidelines/. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/texastribune/