Grow's proposal, which still is being fine-tuned, calls for earmarking 10 percent of Idaho's sales tax revenues to go to property tax relief for homeowners.

That would be done in the form of a state-paid credit against the property tax owed, similar to how the "circuit breaker" state-funded property tax reduction for low-income seniors works. As Grow envisions it, the credit would come to roughly 40 percent of a homeowner's property tax bill after the homeowner's exemption, excluding voter-approved levies, which wouldn't be subsidized. The relief would total roughly $330 million a year.

"I think structurally, we're overtaxing our people," Grow said, as evidenced by the state's huge budget surplus, now estimated at more than $1.5 billion.

"This is a way to return to the homeowners, give them some benefit in property taxes," he said. "Businesses have been helped by income tax reduction, and landlords have been helped by income tax reduction. But the homeowners have had no real relief that's substantive."

Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, who's been working for the past two years on widely supported legislation to increase and re-index the homeowner's exemption, said, "I like Sen. Grow's idea. He's worked very hard on the plan and the bill proposal, which isn't fully final yet, but I like it a lot. And then I like my bill a lot. So the idea is that we'll both of us get them printed," the initial step for introducing legislation in Idaho.

Skaug's bill on the homeowner's exemption had more than 40 cosponsors two years ago, but then-House Revenue & Taxation Committee Chair Steven Harris, R-Meridian, refused to allow it an introductory hearing in his committee. He's redrafted the bill with some updates and is bringing it back.

"We certainly want one of them to pass," Skaug told the Idaho Press. "I'm not married to any one bill. I want relief for the homeowners, tax relief. Maybe we'll end up coming together."

The latest version of Skaug's bill would raise the cap on the homeowner's exemption, now capped at $125,000, to $242,000, and bring back the indexing of the cap to the Idaho housing price index. In 2016, the Legislature froze the exemption, which previously had its maximum amount go up and down with Idaho housing prices. Then, Idaho home prices skyrocketed, resulting in huge tax increases for Idaho homeowners whose exemption remained capped.

"We set the homeowner's exemption immediately at $242,000, rather than the $125,000 now," Skaug said. "That's just where the indexing would be from 2016 if we left it alone as a Legislature. So I'm not doing a tax shift. I'm just recalibrating back to what it had before."

"It brings immediate relief to homeowners everywhere across the state," he said, adding, "A lot of it will depend on our tax committee chairmen both in the Senate and the House. We'll see what Rep. Monks has to say about these bills."

That would be Rep. Jason Monks, R-Meridian, the newly named chairman of the House Revenue & Taxation Committee. Both Skaug and Grow have been in touch with Monks on the issue.

"I think there's a lot of ways to provide property tax relief to our Idahoans," Monks told the Idaho Press, "and I think a lot of them will work. It just depends on what we choose to do. And I'm not committing to any particular path forward at this point, but I am committed to working on it, and we'll definitely look at Sen. Grow's bill and Rep. Skaug's bill as well."

He added, "I think all options right now are on the table."