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TIF: Federal Bill Funding Cannot Come From Horseplayers

by Thoroughbred Idea Foundation

Editor’s note: The following open letter to the industry was submitted by the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, a think tank and advocacy group which aims to improve the sport of Thoroughbred racing for all stakeholders.

The passage of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) would signal a prominent turning point for Thoroughbred racing in America.

Regardless of where one has stood on the merits of the legislation over the years, its passage will bring to an end a generation of discord between industry participants, enabling our greater industry the opportunity to focus on long-ignored advancements to better secure the sustainability of horse racing.

At its heart, racing exists because of horse owners and breeders investing in Thoroughbreds and horseplayers wagering on them. Policies which hinder participation, of horseplayers or through ownership, stunt industry growth, and are in opposition to the mission of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, which seeks to grow participation through these two key groups. We want racing’s overall “pie” to grow, but without horse owners and horseplayers voluntarily choosing to participate in the sport, racing would be would be a shell of itself.

The HISA will yield a federally recognized organization to facilitate doping control within the sport while bringing more constituencies under the regulatory fold. Upon its passage, substantial planning and execution will still be required, including identifying the funding mechanism for individual states’ participation in HISA-created programs. The path forward to paying for these programs remains unclear.

In some states, wagering is a main source of funding for racing commissions to regulate the sport. Should HISA programs increase costs to states–a reasonable expectation–it is possible they, in concert with other stakeholder groups, could turn to wagering channels to increase revenues.

This would be a gross miscalculation.

While HISA has earned support because of the undoubted need for racing to be proactive in maintaining its social license to operate, the programs associated with the bill should not be built on the backs of horseplayers.

The Thoroughbred Idea Foundation advocates for sound policies which encourage wagering, racing’s most sustainable source of funding. These policies include reducing bet pricing, modernizing wagering technology and integrity measures, increased transparency and reporting standards as well as introducing fixed-odds betting to complement pari-mutuel wagering.

Increasing costs to horseplayers is a counterproductive measure for the industry, and thus, any increases in bet pricing to pay for the programs associated with the HISA should be a non-starter.

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Thoroughbred Idea Foundation: Federal Bill Funding Cannot Come From Horseplayers

The passage of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) would signal a prominent turning point for Thoroughbred racing in America.

At its heart, racing exists because of horse owners and breeders investing in Thoroughbreds and horseplayers wagering on them. Policies which hinder participation, of horseplayers or through ownership, stunt industry growth, and are in opposition to the mission of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, which seeks to grow participation through these two key groups. We want racing's overall “pie” to grow, but without horse owners and horseplayers voluntarily choosing to participate in the sport, racing would be would be a shell of itself.

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act will yield a federally-recognized organization to facilitate doping control within the sport while bringing more constituencies under the regulatory fold. Upon its passage, substantial planning and execution will still be required, including identifying the funding mechanism for individual states' participation in HISA-created programs. The path forward to paying for these programs remains unclear.

In some states, wagering is a main source of funding for racing commissions to regulate the sport. Should HISA programs increase costs to states – a reasonable expectation – it is possible they, in concert with other stakeholder groups, could turn to wagering channels to increase revenues.

This would be a gross miscalculation.

The Thoroughbred Idea Foundation advocates for sound policies which encourage wagering, racing's most sustainable source of funding. These policies include reducing bet pricing, modernizing wagering technology and integrity measures, increased transparency and reporting standards as well as introducing fixed odds betting to complement pari-mutuel wagering.

Increasing costs to horseplayers is a counterproductive measure for the industry, and thus, any increases in bet pricing to pay for the programs associated with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act should be a non-starter.

Below, please see more from the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation's Wagering & Integrity Issues Steering Committee, presented by committee member Jonathon Kinchen.

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USTA’s Williams: Time Has Passed For Standardbred Industry To Get A ‘Place At The Table’ With Federal Bill

U.S. Trotting Association President Russell C. Williams submitted the following letter to the editor to the Paulick Report this week. Williams wanted to share his thoughts on a letter we published Oct. 16 from USTA director David Siegel. Siegel urged the Standardbred industry to “extend an olive branch” to supporters of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 with the hope of active participation in any forthcoming federal racing authority.

My friend David Siegel urges the Standardbred industry to be practical and sit down with the federal bill's key supporters to influence its direction regarding Standardbred racing. This is one of several calls for us to come to the table. All of them suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding of how laws work.

Passing a law is completely different from, say, issuing an invitation to discuss a plan to strengthen integrity, something that never happened in this case. If the bill passes, it will become a federal statute. “Place at the table” platitudes like David's ignore that with a statute you can get what is provided in the statute, and you cannot get what is not provided. For a negotiation to have any meaning at this point, it would have to be possible for the bill's language to change before it becomes a statute. Our experience over more than three years demonstrates that this is impossible.

A good example of how the bill leaves nothing to be discussed at any table is its special approach to race-day Lasix. The key supporters selected this particular therapeutic medication and explicitly banned it. A remarkable gauntlet of language in the bill makes even the slightest modification of the ban impossible to achieve. There is, therefore, nothing to negotiate regarding the race-day Lasix ban, enshrined as it is in the language of the bill itself. This exemplifies the fallacy in the “be practical and negotiate” message.

The same goes for all the other ways in which the bill is unacceptable. Since we were first inserted into the bill without our knowledge or consent, the Standardbred industry has repeatedly explained our objections to it, every one of which would require changes to its language. The key supporters have consistently set their faces against even a single change. Thus, a one-sided negotiation has already been going on for more than three years, during which our concerns have been completely disregarded.

The United States Trotting Association is not alone in objecting to the language of the bill. The National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association represents 29,000 Thoroughbred people who are not in racing for the silver cups. Like most USTA members, most of them make their living in racing and, like us, they object to the language of the bill. The American Quarter Horse Association has 221,000 members, and they also object to the language of the bill. None of us is interested in an opportunity to sit down now, at the Children's Table.

The time for harness racing to have been offered a place at a table was before we got shoehorned into a done deal of someone else's making. That would have been a good faith moment in which to discuss a legislative approach that would credibly allow for the profound differences in the breeds, account for the still-unknown costs that a new federal regulatory tier will rain down on us if we tolerate this legislation, and preserve to us the decisive voice in our own destiny that we deserve to keep.

Fortunately, we have other, eminently practical ways to prevent the federal bill's key supporters – no, let us call them what they are: its elite supporters — from imposing their notion of a future on us.

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ARCI: Financial Impact, Implementation Details Should Be Known Before Passage Of HISA Bill

Expressing concerns about undefined cost mandates and implementation issues associated with S.4547, the proposed Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020, the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) believes Legislators should require more information about how the legislation will impact individual States before moving forward with the proposal.

“The RCI Board believes there are some very good things in this bill,” said Ed Martin, President of the ARCI. “But there is a huge financial unknown concerning the cost, especially how it will impact smaller and mid-sized racing entities and exactly how this is to be implemented.”

Martin said the ARCI is committed to a smooth transition once the proposal is enacted into law, noting that the legislation addresses issues long advocated by the association, specifically uniform rules and testing. “This legislation accomplishes that and also solves the funding issue that has been an annual headache for every racing commission,” he said.

The ARCI Board met this week and discussed the proposal at length. “There are many questions about how this will work and a general concern about how smaller and midsized racing venues will survive if required to pay additional regulatory expenses,” he said. A staff analysis of the legislation noted at least 35 racing venues in 19 US States that should be monitored to assess the extent to which they will be able to withstand additional financial mandates imposed by the legislation.

The RCI Board felt that there were too many unanswered questions to embrace the legislation at this time although directors from Kentucky spoke in favor, West Virginia against, and some other jurisdictions withheld comment pending direction from their full Commission.

Other than shifting medication rule making authority and in some jurisdictions the responsibility for operating and paying for the enforcement program, the State Racing Commissions are perhaps the entities least impacted by this legislation.

There is a concern that in an attempt to strengthen racing, this bill may reduce racing opportunities in some communities with a ripple effect on local economies, particularly in the agricultural sector.

“The RCI Board believes the sponsors and proponents of this bill should allay those fears by providing details about the anticipated costs associated with the new Authority and the Enforcement Agency as well as state specific operational costs should they assume the entire enforcement program now operated by the State,” Martin said.

Martin said that the statute, when implemented, will be similar in some ways to the system in place for RCI Members in Canada, except that investigations there and adjudications are handled by Provincial Racing Commissions with testing and screening limits handled by a federal agency uniformly.

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