Our opinion: A costly piece of art leaves us asking, what is NYRA thinking? Horse racing should be an asset in New York, not one bumble and scandal after another.
When you embark on a project, it?s useful to ask: What would success look like? We can?t think of a more appropriate question when it comes to the future of thoroughbred racing in New York.
We sure know what success wouldn?t look like. It wouldn?t look like the 2011 annual report of the state?s Franchise Oversight Board, which detailed how the New York Racing Association lost even more money than 2010, despite taking in millions of dollars more in bets and getting help from new video slots.
Nor would it look like a $250,000 piece of vanity art commissioned by an association that is forever crying poverty while managing the kind of business that any mob boss would give his right arm to run.
What was NYRA thinking when it hired an artist to paint a mural that featured some of NYRA?s own leaders? If NYRA had a quarter of a million dollars burning a hole in its pocket, it should have sent it to the state treasury to start making up for all those years that the association stiffed taxpayers on their fair share of proceeds from their own racetracks.
It?s bad enough that as the Times Union?s James M. Odato reported Thursday, NYRA commissioned this art in a year when it lost $24 million. It?s all the more insulting that it was ordered by Charles Hayward, NYRA?s now-ousted CEO, at a time when NYRA was secretly overcharging certain bettors to the tune of $8.5 million. And for Mr. Hayward to give this commission to a friend smacks of crass cronyism.
When it comes to what not to do, a new NYRA Reorganization Board has plenty to work with as it embarks on a three-year project to reform the association and the management of horse racing in New York. The list of ?don?ts? stretches back through years of mismanagement and corruption.
As for how racing in New York should look, three words come to mind: professional, transparent and invisible.
A professional racing operation would operate like a public benefit corporation, not like a private club whose members seem to think they?re living off a taxpayer-supported trust fund. It used to be called the sport of kings, but horse racing has long been subsidized by the ordinary citizens of New York, and they deserve a return on their investment.
A transparent racing operation would open its records and operations to taxpayer scrutiny, just as a public agency is required to do, and its salaries would be more in line with the public sector than a Vegas casino. That would be the case even if the state decides, as some have suggested, to hand the management of the state?s tracks over to a for-profit company. Before that happens, though, New York should explain why this can?t be done by a public or nonprofit entity.
As for invisible, NYRA, or whoever is running the show, wouldn?t overshadow the excitement of great horse racing. Its blunders wouldn?t interfere with the economic benefits that race tracks would be spinning off to their surrounding communities, nor would its scandals limit the millions of dollars that are supposed to be earmarked for ? remember this? ? education.
In short, racing, and all its promised benefits, would be the headlines. NYRA? We?d hardly know it was there.
Source: http://blog.timesunion.com/opinion/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-with-this-picture/22245/
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