Penn. Shutdown Threat Pushed Back…Again

For the third consecutive Friday, it appears as if Pennsylvania horse racing will have a deadline extended and a threatened shutdown of the industry pushed back.

The sport’s stakeholders and state officials have been attempting to work out a plan to pay for the operating costs of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission, whose $20 million annual budget is $6.2 million in the red.

The new wrinkle this week is that there has been a substantial thaw the five-month, governor-vs.-legislature state budget standoff. That impasse is what has been preventing a transfer of money from other sources to make up a shortfall in the State Racing Fund, which is the primary funding mechanism for the PHRC.

On Oct. 22, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration threatened to issue a “cease within 30 days” notice to the racing industry, which cannot legally operate without oversight and drug testing provided by the PHRC.

That threat of a shutdown spurred immediate negotiations among Pennsylvania horsemen’s group representatives, the state’s six Thoroughbred and Standardbred tracks, and government officials. They were tasked with coming up with a plan that would shift the responsibility for funding the PHRC off of the state and onto the sport’s stakeholders.

Over the past three weeks, parties involved in those negotiations have cited general progress in restructuring the State Racing Fund while remaining vague about how much of the costs horsemen and the tracks would be expected to bear.

But this week’s higher-level breakthrough in the overall budget impasse has raised the possibility that the State Racing Fund woes could be solved without stakeholders being on the hook for the brunt of the costs.

When asked if that was a possibility, Salvatore DeBunda, president of the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, said “until I see the budget, I don’t have any ability to respond to that.”

Nor would DeBunda comment on details of the State Racing Fund restructuring plan or how much of the costs his horsemen have agreed to pay going forward.

“Until it’s finalized, I think that would not be fair to do,” DeBunda said. “I do anticipate that we will not have a shutdown, that we will be able to work this out.”

Further insight was not forthcoming from the PHRC or its overseer, the Department of Agriculture. Representatives from both departments failed to respond to requests for comment in time for deadline for this story.

DeBunda did acknowledge that the stakeholders have been making “a lot of progress,” but that a Thursday teleconference was called off in deference to the ongoing higher-level budget talks.

“We were supposed to have a conference call [Thursday ] at 1:30 p.m. to try and see if we could finalize this by the new [shutdown] deadline of [Friday],” DeBunda said. “Late [Thursday] morning we got an email that the call was cancelled because the people involved are working on finalizing the budget…I think [state budget negotiations] have now taken priority over dealing with [negotiations among stakeholders]. It’s really not our fault that we’re not able to get together and talk about it. At this point, there’s no definitive answer.”