These guys are so corrupt that they can't even ask the Attorney General for a Free Opinion.
NYRA, City Late With Nassau Taxes
The New York Racing Association and the City of New Yorkhave been consistently late in paying taxes owed to Nassau County, according to
a review by county Comptroller Howard Weitzman.
State law requires the city to pay Nassau 75 percent of taxes on admissions
at Belmont Park, which straddles the Nassau-Queens border, within 60 days of
being collected by NYRA. After gathering the admission revenue, NYRA gives tax
money to the city.
But Weitzman's review shows that last year and in the first half of this
year, NYRA was late in filing its tax portion with the city by an average of 50
days, and that the city was then tardy in paying Nassau its share of the taxes.
"In this time of fiscal uncertainty, Nassau needs every dollar coming to
it," Weitzman said. "The county makes every attempt to pay other municipalities
as quickly as possible and we expect the same treatment."
The review points out that neither NYRA nor the city actually stiffed
Nassau - both paid up eventually. But the review shows their payments totalling
$74,451 were anywhere from 1 1/2 months to 5 1/2 months late.
Late fees of $6,500 should have been paid but were not, according to
Weitzman's review.
NYRA spokesman Bill Nader said the racing association had paid several
months' bills in advance, but were delinquent in months when operations were
being switched from one track to another. "In the future, we'll make every
effort to overcome the problem," he said.
The mayor's office did not return calls seeking comment.
Weitzman called on Nassau County Treasurer Henry Dachowitz to levy fines on
NYRA and charge interest to both entities when payments are late.
NYRA is facing a federal probe of tellers and their supervisors, and has
been criticized by the state attorney general, comptroller and racing and
wagering board. All cited failures in management oversight, as well as alleging
that NYRA has denied the state revenue.
Dear Attorney General Eric Schneiderman:
The Bettors of the State of New York and the employees of the remaining OTBs, public benefit corporations, have no standing to ask for your Opinion to the following simple questions with seemingly obvious answers::
1. Will the Attorney General defend the constitutionality of NY PML Sec 105?
2. Does NY PML Sec 105 apply to Nassau OTB?
3. Does NY PML Sec 105 violate the rights of New York Bettors secured by NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3?
4. Is NY PML Sec 105 vague, indefinite and/or overly broad as the term "Easter Sunday" does not define one and only one Sunday in all years (see eg Gregorian and Julian Calendars)? See article from the Wall Street Journal on Calendars below.
I hope that you will sua sponte issue an Opinion as to the above so that bettors may bet, workers may work or not as they wish, and the State and its subdivisions make money. There are tracks running all across the United States every day of the year that bettors want to bet. Track calendars may be found at eg www.ntra.com. The OTBs also sell New York Lottery tickets which are drawn every day of the year. The OTBs also cash non IRS Lottery tickets in cash for any sum, a convenience for many Lotto Players.
It is critical in these current time that the OTBs are open when customers want to bet. I believe that your Opinion will belatedly validate the actions of New York City OTB taken on the advice of its Counsel in 2003.
Sincerely yours,
February 26, 2012
Open On 1st Palm Sunday, Otb Rakes In $2m - New York Daily News
articles.nydailynews.com/.../18220335_1_racing-and-wagering-boar...
Open On 1st Palm Sunday, Otb Rakes In $2m. BY JERRY BOSSERT DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER. Monday, April 14, 2003. New York City Off-Track Betting ...
§ 105. Supplementary regulatory powers of the board. Notwithstanding
any inconsistent provision of law, the board through its rules and
regulations or in allotting dates for racing or in licensing race
meetings at which pari-mutuel betting is permitted shall be empowered
to: (i) permit racing at which pari-mutuel betting is conducted on any
or all dates from the first day of January through the thirty-first day
of December, inclusive of Sundays but exclusive of December twenty-fifth
and Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday; and (ii) fix minimum and maximum
charges for admission at any race meeting.
The Drama of Measuring the Days of Our Lives
· By CARL BIALIK
Humanity's efforts to impose order on time don't always go like clockwork.
There was the Y2K computer-programming fiasco, as the world entered the year 2000. Then there are the seconds that have to be added to the clock occasionally—the next one is in June—to make our definition of a day match the ever-so-slight slowing of the Earth's rotation. And spare a thought for the Swedish couple who married 300 years ago but whose anniversary has never appeared on any calendar.
Sven Hall wed Ellna Jeppsdotter in Ystad, Sweden, on Feb. 30, 1712—a day that existed only because of Protestant Europe's fumbling transition from the Julian calendar system to an approximation of the Gregorian system. Sweden had tried to change gradually before realizing it was out of sync with everyone else, says Bengt Danielson, assistant archival director of the Demographical Database for Southern Sweden. The nation tried to get back in line by adding two leap days to 1712. But it was four decades before Sweden made the wholesale switch from the Julian calendar.
In the centuries since, society has improved its reckoning of time and synchronization of watches across borders. But it continues to use a relatively ancient system for tweaking time by adding leap days—such as next week's Feb. 29—that some astronomers say isn't the ideal mathematical solution to the problem that a year is a bit longer than 365 days. Add in the unpredictable variability in the length of years, and the calendar continues to defy simple computation.
The Numbers Guy blog:
"The calendar isn't a mathematical thing," says Robert Poole, a historian at the University of Cumbria in Lancaster, England, and author of a book on calendar reform in England. "All attempts to systematize calendars are misguided." Yet history is dotted with attempts to systematize calendars. The Julian calendar was named for Julius Caesar, who instituted it in 46 B.C. after recognizing that the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun isn't neatly divisible by the time it takes for the Earth to rotate about its axis.
Caesar added a leap year every four years, which was almost right. But the almost added up. Those extra leap days made the average year too long, shifting annual phenomena—such as the spring and autumn equinox—earlier than their normal seasonal dates by 10 days by 1582. Since the date of Easter is tied to the spring equinox, Pope Gregory XIII sought to overhaul the calendar, skipping 10 days and then removing three leap years every 400 years.
In Gregory's time, England had just emerged from a schism with the church and wasn't eager to follow papal authority. Enter John Dee—"variously listed as an astronomer, mathematician, magician and mystic; today one might even call him a crackpot," says Geoff Chester, a spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory, which plays a key role in counting world time today.
Associated Press
Petr Skala walking on a ledge Friday during his weekly maintenance of the famous astronomical clock in Prague, Czech Republic. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and possibly the oldest one still working.
Dee suggested to Queen Elizabeth a cycle of eight leap years every 33 years. The leap years would come every fourth year starting with the fourth of the cycle, putting a five-year gap between the last leap year of the cycle and the first of the next cycle. Dee didn't invent the system, says Duncan Steel, an astronomer at the Australian Centre for Astrobiology and author of a book about calendar history. A variant of the system remains in use in Iran today, a millennium after Persians first used one like it.
The average year in the Gregorian system lasts exactly 365.2425 days, compared with the average year in the Dee system of a touch over 365.2424 days. The latter is closer to the actual time it takes the Earth to rotate around the sun, about 365.242 days, says Dr. Steel.
Still, Dee was ultimately unsuccessful, and most of the world eventually fell into line with a uniform calendar.
But that hasn't run out the clock on calendar problems. Another complication is that years are measured in days, and days are getting longer as tides create friction and slow the Earth's rotation. The length of the second has been fixed to the oscillation frequency of Cesium-133, using a duration that once corresponded to 1/86,400th of a day. But today—and tomorrow—are longer than the 86,400 seconds clocks world-wide include in a day by about one or two milliseconds—the gap changes daily.
To rectify that shift, the world's timekeepers have agreed to add so-called leap seconds whenever the drift nears a second, typically at midnight London time—the minute starting at 11:59 p.m. has 61 seconds.
As the day grows longer, somewhat unpredictably, there are fractionally fewer days in the year, and so eventually, in the very long run, today's calendar may need to be amended once more. But then, that should be expected, says Steve Allen, an astronomer at the University of California who maintains a website with research about the leap second.
"It is extraordinary hubris for any civilization to presume that its calendar will still be in use in 1,000 years," he says.
Learn more about this topic at WSJ.com/NumbersGuy. Email numbersguy@wsj.com.
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