An effort at the Legislature to undo the city of Austin's deal with Major League Soccer franchise owner Anthony Precourt for a tax-exempt stadium appears dead.



Senate Bill 1771 would have given Travis County, the Austin school district and other local taxing entities the ability to collect property taxes on the MLS stadium set to be built in North Austin, something that could've been a deal breaker for the project. But this week, the bill's author Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, amended the bill to grandfather in the city's deal with Precourt Sports Ventures.

"It will grandfather in everyone that has an existing ... deal in place prior to Sept. 1, 2019," Bettencourt said at a meeting of the Senate's Property Tax Committee.

RELATED: Austin FC launches 4ATX Foundation with $1 million from Precourt family

The Austin City Council’s approval Aug. 15 of a $225 million, 20,500-seat stadium at McKalla Place that would not pay property taxes raised eyebrows at the Travis County Commissioners Court. In August, commissioners authorized the Travis County attorney to challenge the stadium's tax-exempt status.

Under the deal, Precourt will finance the stadium. The city will remain the owner of the McKalla Place tract and the stadium, which it will lease to Precourt for a total of $8.25 million in rent over 20 years. The city-owned tract will remain tax exempt.

At an April 16 meeting of the Senate Property Tax Committee, Precourt Sports Ventures President Dave Greeley said SB 1771 would "jeopardize the viability of Austin FC" team. It was during that meeting that Bettencourt floated the idea of changing the bill to only apply to deals made after the law would take effect.

"We don’t want to try to redo existing deals already on the table," Bettencourt said Tuesday. SB 1771 "sets a future precedent so we don’t have quite frankly the disruption in the community that we witnessed in Travis County, where taxing units were overwritten by the city and were not able to have their voice be heard on an important issue. Let’s change the practice for the future."

A spokesman for the political action committee opposing the stadium deal said that even with Bettencourt's changes, SB 1771 serves as an "indictment" of the Precourt stadium deal.

"If it is a bad policy tomorrow, it is a bad policy today to allow one taxing entity to take away the ability of another," spokesman Chris Lippincott said.

SB 1771 was left pending in the Property Tax Committee.

RELATED: 19-story office tower planned near Austin soccer stadium site

Austin FC officials have said they will start play in 2021. Precourt Sports Ventures is set to break ground on the stadium in September. Austin Commercial will build the stadium.

While the amendment seems to have put an end to attempts at the Legislature to attack the MLS stadium, a local petition effort that could upend the deal is alive and well.

The City Council will likely set an election in November for a petition ordinance that would require putting on the ballot any proposal to lease or sell city-owned land for the construction of a sports or entertainment venue.

Opponents of the deal have called it a tax giveaway. They gathered more than 29,000 signatures in an effort that was largely funded by Circuit of the Americas chair Bobby Epstein. Epstein is the head of the United League soccer team Austin Bold FC, which began playing in March.