An unraveling of troubling financial questions continues at the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority.

And if you thought the $4 million taxpayers may be on the hook for was substantial, check this out.

Bloomberg reports that the sports authority may need to refinance $1 billion in debt and pay as much as $142 million ahead of schedule on bonds and interest-rate swaps.
The mess stems from the authority’s poor financial projections, and to drive the point home, Bloomberg taps the agency’s first chairman, Jack Rains, for a damning comment:

“I’m deeply concerned about the financial stability of the sports authority and all its bonded indebtedness,” Rains said in a phone interview. “When you borrow for 30 years, you have to do prudent things, and they didn’t.”

Recall those heady days when the debt was issued. The taxes backing the authority's 30-year bonds were "well-secured," according to a managing director in Salomon Smith Barney's Chicago office, quoted in the August 11, 1998, Bond Buyer.

Car rental and hotel taxes "... do have a track record" in Texas, the officer said in the story. "We were able to have feasibility consultants look at records and find good data on their performance."

The next year, then-Mayor Lee Brown butted heads with the sports authority over wanting an arena for the basketball team rather than a stadium for the football team.

In a September 1, 1999, story from the Houston Chronicle:

Concerned that Mayor Lee Brown had struck a deal for a downtown arena that they could not pay for, members of the Harris County- Houston Sports Authority voted Tuesday night to add a ticket tax and several other changes that could kill the plan.

The amendments came amid heavy lobbying by Harris County commissioners, the Houston Livestock Show &Rodeo and Bob McNair, who hopes to get a National Football League team for Houston.

The three parties expressed concern that the arena deal could leave insufficient revenues for the authority to pay $195 million toward construction of a $310 million football stadium.

Insufficient revenues? Today’s Bloomberg story seems to put a whole new twist on that.

Earlier this month we ran our own story on the ties of Houston mayoral candidate Gene Locke to the sports authority.

But the latest news has wider, meaner implications. Where's the sports authority supposed to get the money? Unfortunately, taxpayers must ponder the question.

Read more at Field of Schemes.