Winter Racing, NYRA Re-org Board Discussed

by Mike Kane 
There were many more questions posed than 
answers during the program 
“NYRA Re-Organization: Rounding the Far Turn” during Tuesday morning’s session of the Saratoga Institute on Racing and Game Law in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. 
Panel moderator Chris Wittstruck said that New York Racing Association President Chris Kay declined an invitation to take part in the annual two-day event staged by the Government Law Center and the Institute for Legal Studies at Albany Law School. Wittstruck said that a voting NYRA board member agreed to participate, but later cancelled. 
The theme of the discussion was where NYRA is headed after it emerges in Oct. 2015 from the state-imposed and state-controlled re-organization board. During the August meeting of the board, Michael Dubb, a member of the long-term planning committee said it will have recommendations by the end of the calendar year–about four months earlier than required by the legislation setting up the re-organization. Also, Dubb said the committee with have proposals for the future of Aqueduct. 
Richard Violette, president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, said that it will be difficult to consolidate racing at Belmont Park, which currently cannot stage winter racing. Also, Violette said it is impractical to think that NYRA could take a three- or four-month winter break. 
“We’re fine with running four days a week in January and February and small manipulations of the racing days,” Violette said. “If it makes good business sense for the horsemen and the racetrack we certainly wouldn’t be an obstacle. When you are talking about major impact, changing seasons and potentially eliminating a whole season, the dramatic impact on the workforce, the breeding industry and racing industry, the sport as we know it now wouldn’t survive. 
“I’m pretty sure the breeders feel very strongly about that. There are a lot of farms, a lot of breeders, a lot of owners in New York that are dependent upon the revenue they make during December, January, February and March.”
Pat Connor, chairman of the New York State Racing Fans Advisory Council, was the newsmaker on the panel with the announcement that Kay has reached out to him about scheduling a meeting to discuss a letter from the council about a range of issues from Belmont Stakes Day on June 7. Connor said that Kay’s office called him during the last week of July, and that he looks forward to scheduling a meeting now that he has completed some personal business and professional obligations. 
After delivering a history of NYRA’s dealing with the State of New York since it was formed in 1955, attorney Wittstruck, a director of the Standardbred Owners Association of New York, asked whar NYRA will look like with a long-term plan by the re-organization board. He noted that the legislation and a press release put out by NYRA in Oct. 2012 said different things. 
“What should the recommendations be?” he said. “What’s the present NYRA position? If you look at the website it says that the NYRA board ‘will revert back to majority private control.’ That’s interesting because that’s a sentence lifted form the press release. 
“Is the position of NYRA that after three years it is going to revert back to majority private control? The thing that strikes me as an attorney is that is not exactly what the statute says. The legislation never said anything about returning to majority private control. What did the legislation say? ‘…a plan for the prospective not-for-profit governing structure of NYRA.’ NYRA is a not-for-profit. Their corporate structure hasn’t changed. Why couldn’t the present board indicate that the long-term plan is to extend the re-organization board for another three years, another six years, another 10 years? I guess that’s possible.” 
Violette, a non-voting member of the NYRA board, said he could not predict how NYRA will be structured after the re-organization period ends.
“I don’t know that anybody has a real sense,” Violette said. “Everything is on the table, from the same old, same old, to the old NYRA-type setup, to a quasi-government, to a privatization that’s profit-making or a tangent from a not-for-profit to a profit-making wing of the organization. 
“Everything is on the table. There is a lot of work to be done. I don’t know if there are four people in the room who know exactly where we’re going and this all calisthenics to get to that spot. All I know is that everything else is basically on the table.” 
Violette said that Genting, the Malaysian gaming company that operates the casino at Aqueduct Racetrack, presented NYRA in 2011 with a $700 million plan to have racing leave Aqueduct and consolidate at Belmont Park. He said that figure would probably be in the neighborhood of $1 billion now, but that it would make no sense for NYRA to accept unless it was guaranteed that it would receive the money needed for the costly Belmont project. 
“There has to be some real planning, not just for two years or five years down the road, but 10 or 20 years, at least through the end of the franchise. It’s quite easy to say that with two race tracks too close together that there are some wasted economies of scale and that we should we condense over to Belmont. 
“There are a couple of complications. There’s no question having our big foot in the door racing at Aqueduct in the same facility where there are 5,000 VLT machines might be our best protection in not losing the revenue. And if you move out of the county and stop dealing with its legislature, there can be loopholes that all of a sudden can happen. 
“Absent some kind of iron-clad protection that racing days and racing revenue would not be affected by some transfer, I think the breeders and certainly horsemen are if not skeptical we’re certainly treading on a very thin layer of ice as to what commitment we can make going forward until we see what is in the plans,” 
Connor’s committee sent a letter to Kay that cited a number of problems that affected fans at the Belmont Stakes. The list included issues with parking, fan control in the grandstand and the poaching of seats, shortages of water and food, an inadequate number of rest rooms, poor WIFI reception. He said his council believes that the Belmont Stakes is the best day to introduce fans to the sport and that NYRA wasted an opportunity this year. 
“We think that NYRA should go above and beyond the call of duty that day and make those people who are coming to the track for the first time want to come back to the racetrack,” he said. “That’s why we were so disappointed with the experience on Belmont Stakes Day. These are not things that were alleged. I sat in the grandstand, Section XX, I believe. We were there. 
“That would be another recommendation we should consider putting in the report, that members of the NYRA Board of Trustees sit throughout the facility on big days so they can see what is going on. The representatives of NYRA should sit throughout the facility, take public transportation to the facility so they get a first-hand view of what the fans are experiencing. I know it’s done in other sports. It’s done in other facilities. I think it would be an interesting undertaking for the officials to do that.”