The Insider

Last week's meeting of the Houston Sports Authority had a larger than usual media turnout, thanks to a protest e-mail circulated by Jack Rains, the HSA's former chairman. In his missive, Rains accused the group of planning to gut an ethics code he had helped craft that requires HSA board members, employees and vendors to disclose any interconnecting financial ties.

"I read the agenda for tomorrow's meeting and was shocked to see a proposal for lowering the ethics standards of [the HSA]," Rains warned. "I urge all current board members to vote 'No' on this proposal."

The ethics code tip proved less than a news blockbuster. HSA counsel Gene Locke explained at the meeting that rather than junking the code, the "housekeeping measure" simply brought it in line with nearly identical ethics provisions in legislation passed by state Representative Garnet Coleman of Houston. The HSA board voted unanimously, with one abstention, for the change, and the issue went unmentioned in news coverage of the meeting.

After the meeting, which he did not attend, Rains credited the public scrutiny he had stirred up with foiling an effort to dismantle the code.

"I'm sure we raised enough hell, and turned on enough lights, that it became housekeeping."

Effective or errant, Rains's ethics haymaker was a rare public swing in what has become his behind-the-scenes fight against former colleagues. Still seething over his replacement by developer Billy Burge, Rains questions Burge's ethics and the motivations of county officials supervising construction of the $350 million-or-so stadium for Bob McNair's new National Football League franchise.

Jack Morris Rains has the personality of a bulldozer and the six foot one, 280-pound chassis to match. One less-than-admiring official who dealt with Rains as chairman describes him as "a fat, arrogant blowhard."

HSA trustee Jim Jard says the highly emotional Rains is furious that his achievements in negotiating the Astros' Enron Field project earned him not plaudits but a pink slip as chairman. "Jack's a proud person, and he wanted to be honored," Jard says. "So he's bitter, he's mad, and he's upset, not only with the people who didn't reappoint him, but the person who's taken his place."

Rains precipitated his downfall by treating elected city and county officials other than Mayor Lee Brown and County Judge Robert Eckels as nuisances who did not rate serious consultation. "I answer to only two people," Rains once snapped in brushing off a city councilman's request for a meeting. "The mayor and the county judge."

Coleman's bill, passed in the last legislative session, changed all that. It mandated that the HSA chairman be nominated by the mayor, but approved by City Council and Harris County Commissioners Court. It eliminated Rains's sometime-ally Eckels from his nominating role.

Since Rains was already at odds with a majority of the court -- Commissioners Steve Radack, El Franco Lee and Jerry Eversole -- Coleman's bill was a death warrant for the HSA chairman. City councilmembers and commissioners he had long ignored could get revenge by replacing him with Burge.

The 63-year-old attorney-developer contends he was forced from the HSA helm not by his cantankerous personality, but by a cabal of county officials and contractors out to profit from the construction of the new football stadium. He's not about to fade into the urban woodwork and let them get away with it.

Rains, however, has rather tainted credentials as an ethics crusader. During his tenure as chairman he was in the center of controversies over HSA's hiring of the Looper Reed Mark & McGraw law firm where Rains works. There were several instances where the Rains-led HSA appeared to violate the state's open meetings law. Coleman, perhaps the single official most responsible for Rains's downfall, is less than sympathetic to his new posture as a reformer.

"Calling somebody else unethical," says Coleman, a sarcastic edge to his voice, "does not make you ethical."

An HSA board member also finds Rains's ethics crusade somewhat puzzling, considering he never spoke out on the issue as chairman.

"Whether Jack stays or not [as chair], there's either corruption or not," muses the source. "So why would you threaten to expose it only if you weren't reappointed?" The official laughs and continues:

"The only crusading Jack's ever been interested in is when it promotes his own self-interest."

Rains counters he never personally profited from the legal association between Looper Reed and the HSA. He says he used a lawyer from the firm only in a pinch, to negotiate with the Astros after firing HSA counsel Bob Collie for refusing to follow his orders. He notes that it was the Burge-chaired HSA construction committee that was accused of conducting clandestine meetings. Rains boasts he brought the baseball stadium in under budget and without scandal.

At the same time, Rains says that he, as chairman, forcibly prevented HSA member Burge from exploiting business ties with HSA contractors. At issue was Burge's proposed partnership last year with Enron Field contractor Brown & Root in building the downtown county jail.

"It is no secret that I told Billy he was not going to use Brown & Root as his partner on the jail dealŠ.And that if he did I would call for his resignation," says Rains. "He can do whatever he wants to, but to involve Brown & Root Š is just outrageous."