Austin wanted to ban gun shows.

Much legal precedent, and the Texas AG came out and said “you can’t do that”.

Now it appears Travis County officials have accepted that:

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Travis County Commissioners on Tuesday voted to honor the existing contract with the organizer of the gun shows at the Travis County Expo.

The unanimous vote came after the five-member body met with its lawyers and heard from people with an interest in the topic.

Full story (h/t Tim)

As far as I can tell, it wasn’t a question of if they wanted to or not, but merely a question of if they had any legal ability to do so. And they do not.

“The first thing we ought to do is huddle with legal counsel in executive session for a follow up legal briefing,” Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe said before the vote. “We discussed it in part last Tuesday, and the preliminary determination was that we probably did not have the authority — which is why we didn’t take any action. ”

The angle I took with the Travis County Commissioners as well as the Austin City Council wasn’t that of guns — because it’s evident they have their minds made up on that topic. So, it was better to take the approach of what a politician cares about: money and re-election. If they tried this, they would have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in simple rental revenue, and they would have likely lost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from the resulting lawsuits. Given “these tough economic times” and how it’s been tough for the City and County to manage a budget, all the other cuts they’ve had to make, all the tax increases they’ve done well… to invite revenue loss through severed contracts and lawsuits, that would simply be irresponsible.

Seems they realized this:

Opponents argue the county would lose $128,000 in rental-fee revenues from the pending contracts of the nine Saxet Gun Show events scheduled this year.

[Travis County Judge Sam] Biscoe said if they were to cancel those contracts, it’s more than likely the county would face legal battles for damages.

I doubt this issue has been put to rest, but it seems at least a dose of reality has been taken.

Updated:  I need to ammend this.

First, it seems the devil is in the details. They are going to honor the existing contract. The implication is future contracts will be “considered”, and you can bet they’ll reject them for whatever reason. And in some respects, that’s their prerogative.

Second, it seems the City of Austin is still going to figure out what they can do regarding city-owned properties. So yeah, the issue hasn’t been put to rest.