1. Why do the OTBs take the customers for granted ?
2. Why has it as yet not occurred that bettors and workers of OTB have not organized a gambling party so that people may bet and work without the OTB going bankrupt like NYC OTB or filing for bankruptcy like Suffolk OTB or claiming lack of money like other OTBs?
3. Why has no bettor considered the possibility of making a legal score based on the religious preference of the State of NY?
OPEN ON 1ST PALM SUNDAY, OTB RAKES IN $2M - NY Daily News
www.nydailynews.com/.../open-1st-palm-sunday-otb-rakes-2m-article-1.65...
Apr 14, 2003 - New York City Off-Track Betting made history yesterday, taking bets on Palm Sunday. ... By Jerry Bossert / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. Monday ...OTB FACES HAND SLAP OVER PALM - NY Daily News
www.nydailynews.com/archives/.../otb-faces-hand-slap-palm-article-1.6672...
Apr 16, 2003 - It has been three days since New York City Off-Track Betting defied the law and opened up on ... By Jerry Bossert / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.
HI-
Thanks for
the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy,
if you give me a mailing address.
Claude Solnik
(631) 913-4244
Long
Island Business News
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LI Confidential > Stop
scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
See also NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3
4. Why can't politicians be competent crooks with character and a long term view?
Long Island Business News
Suffolk, Nassau OTB probe ethics conflict
by David Winzelberg
Published: November 24th, 2013
At least one employee of Nassau County Off-Track Betting is questioning whether the head of his employee union, a member-elect of the Suffolk County Legislature, should have a say in Suffolk OTB business.
Teamsters Local 707 President
Kevin McCaffery, whose union represents about 200 Nassau OTB workers,
was elected earlier this month to serve as a Suffolk legislator
representing
the 14th District. In a letter last week, Nassau OTB cashier Jackson
Leeds alerted the Suffolk County Ethics Board to McCaffery’s possible
conflict of interest.
“As a Suffolk County legislator, his duties are to the people of Suffolk
County,” Leeds wrote. “He cannot simultaneously represent the interests
of employees of Nassau OTB, a Nassau County public benefit
corporation.”
McCaffery told LIBN he doesn’t think the two counties’ OTBs are in
competition with each other and he doesn’t see his role as union leader
for Nassau OTB workers as a conflict with issues surrounding Suffolk
OTB.
“If anything, I have the background of dealing with Nassau OTB, which
gives me more insight on the subject than any other legislator out
there,” McCaffery said.
When asked if the legislator-elect’s union job appeared to be a conflict
of interest, Nassau OTB chief Joseph Cairo said, “If you really want to
stretch it. But I don’t see anything that’s apparent to me.”
Cairo added that he’ll instruct the Nassau agency’s counsel to review the situation.
Leeds, a 10-year veteran of Nassau OTB, complained that both union
officials and county OTB management have been too focused on the 1,000
video lottery terminals planned for each county’s OTB and they’re not
paying enough attention to current operations.
“They never worked behind a window,” Leeds told LIBN. “They’re out of touch with the bettors of Nassau County.”
Internet wagering and dwindling handles – the overall money being
wagered – have prompted a consolidation in Nassau OTB’s operations in
recent years; there were 15 betting offices in Nassau in 2003, and now
there are eight. Suffolk OTB, which has seven branch
offices, filed for bankruptcy last year.
These days, according to some analysts, OTB offices exist largely for
political patronage – another reason, according to Leeds, that the
Nassau union chief shouldn’t mix one business with the other.
“Union leaders should not be politicians,” he said. “OTBs are run by
politicians. Being political and doing public good aren’t always
incompatible, but they often are.”
This isn’t the first time a Long Island legislator’s OTB ties have become an issue.
In May 2000, Gregory Peterson, then-president of the Nassau OTB, sued to
prevent Nassau County Leg. Roger Corbin from voting on appointments to
the Nassau OTB’s board of directors. Because Corbin was employed as a
branch manager for New York City OTB and a
member of Teamsters Local 858, which then represented all employees of
Nassau OTB, Peterson alleged Corbin’s legislative role posed a conflict
of interest.
A New York Supreme Court judge issued an injunction preventing Corbin
from voting on OTB appointments, but Corbin appealed and the lower
court’s decision was reversed. The Nassau County Board of Ethics also
chimed in, determining by a 3-2 vote that voting on
OTB appointments didn’t create a conflict because Corbin didn’t
influence policy or engage in labor negotiations.
With McCaffery, some observers say it’s best to proceed with caution.
Anthony Figliola, vice president of Uniondale-based government relations firm Empire Government Strategies, said the legislator-elect may want to recuse himself
from any votes concerning Suffolk OTB until the Suffolk County Ethics Board offers an opinion.
“OTB is a political football,” Figliola said. “It’s better to stay out
of it, especially if you want to get things done in the Legislature.”
David Winzelberg
Reporter
631.913.4247
917.796.1801
I hope there is something in the study of OTBs et al that may be of interest to your and/or your students.
Robin Nagle
Director;Ph.D. 1994, M.Phil., 1991, M.A. 1989, Columbia; B.A. 1987, New York,
Dr. Nagle is an anthropologist whose research focuses on the category of material culture known variously as garbage, rubbish, refuse, trash, or waste. She is particularly interested in its labor and infrastructural requirements in urban contexts. She explores the many reasons that labors of waste and logistical necessities of successful large-scale solid waste management are accorded a form of invisibility, despite their essential role in political, economic, environmental, and cultural debate. She also asks what it means for workers to commit to a professional endeavor that carries a significant stigma even as it is fundamental to the city’s well-being. In addition, she looks at how metropolitan regions are literally shaped by trash, since many urban spaces have been formed by landfilling, and how notions of public health and hygiene are inextricably connected to assumptions about appropriate street cleanliness and garbage collection protocols.
In 2006, Nagle was named anthropologist-in-residence with the Department of Sanitation in New York City. She is working with colleagues in the DSNY and at NYU to organize the Department’s archives, to establish an on-going Oral History Project, to create a Wall of Honor for city Sanitation personnel killed on the job, and to found the city’s Sanitation Museum. She is also finishing an ethnography about what it is to be a sanitation worker. The book, called Picking Up, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Nagle earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University in 1994. She first came to NYU as Assistant Dean for Student Affairs and Academic Services within the Graduate School of Arts and Science that same year. She has been director of the Draper Program since 1996.
Publications
Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City (2013, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux); Claiming the Virgin: The Broken Promise of Liberation Theology in Brazil (1997, Routledge); "A Plague in the Villages," in Covering the Plague: AIDS and the American Media (1989, Rutgers).
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