Same sand, diffferent line

Life in the cradle of political pathos is never quite serene. It goes from one potentially chaotic doomsday scenario to the next, sometimes, as is now the case, week to week.

The lawmakers of New York blinked last week when faced with a shutdown of racing at Aqueduct and finally fashioned an agreement that settles the issue of the New York Racing Association’s stewardship of Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga for a quarter-century, solves at least for the moment, the organization’s fiscal morass and sets aside the question of real-estate ownership. This week, it stares into the steely eyes of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who plans to close two city OTB facilities this month and the entire operation in June absent the state’s response to demands for restructuring of an astoundingly unfavorable formula for distribution of revenue.

According to the Daily News: Bloomberg said Albany leaders have ignored his repeated warnings about fixing the New York City Off-Track Betting Corp.'s financial crisis. He charged that, “… the only ways you can get Albany to function is to create a crisis."

Without naming names, the mayor fumed, "Maybe you want to question why they make decisions this way, why everything has to be done in the dead of night, why everything has to be done at the last moment -- only when there's a crisis."

Bloomberg provided the current crisis and given lawmakers something to occupy their evenings in a Tuesday meeting with the five-member NYCOTB board -- exclusively mayoral appointees -- and urging (this is the same as ordering) approval of a plan to shut down the entire network, which handles more than $1 billion annually.

The mayor has a point. Revenue-sharing mandates and formulas imposed by Albany require 120 percent of net profits be paid to the, leaving the city a $14 million shortfall from an organization that is technically profitable. Only Albany could conceive such a plan. Elected officials in most states are capable to grasping rudimentary arithmetic.

Unless Gov. Eliot Spitzer, state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver act quickly, OTB expires on June 16, when its 1,500 employees will be laid off. The politicians took NYRA beyond the brink, at which point a line drawn in the sand resulted in action. If they look down between now and mid-June, they may notice another line in the same sand.

The closing of the city's 62 betting parlors will begin with two branches with leases that expire at month's end, one on Steinway St. in Astoria, Queens, the other on Staten Island. Like all else of importance in this state, odds are heavily in favor of an eleventh-hour compromise. Elected officials, with re-election always foremost on the agenda, are loath to force 1,500 people into unemployment, in this case, many of whom are politically connected and enjoying the largesse of patronage.

Still, in dealing with the OTB issue, lawmakers must consider the opportunity to repair the bedrock problem, which is a structure that can be characterized only as the work of idiots. New York shines worldwide as the textbook example of what not to do when structuring the architecture of an off-site betting enterprise. Just as it squandered the opportunity to perform a thorough and decisive restructure of the racing law last week, settling for one that is a few bricks short of a load, the governing bodies of New York are likely to arrive at some patchwork that satisfies the city’s demand but leaves other shortcomings of the business model to fester unattended until some new crisis presents itself.

Though it is ineptly conceived and ludicrously structured, OTB has become an important element of the structure of racing and pari-mutuel wagering, which has migrated steadily off-site in the last three decades in New York. Ideally, it would work best for all concerned were it joined with NYRA’s new not-for-profit model and subsequently streamlined in the mold of the highly successful system operated in Canada by the Ontario Jockey Club.

This would require thoughtful consideration and a modicum of practical vision, things considered contemptuous by New York’s politicians. The New York OTB issue will be settled. Unlike the legislative leaders, Bloomberg actually means what he says and there is no basis for defending the current economic structure. He has Albany by the proverbial short hairs in this matter. But will it be settled properly?

Stop laughing.



Aqueduct: Feb. 21

Race 4: Peleliu