It looks like Cuomo is losing control of spending but he continues to keep the noose on ny const art 1 sec 3 infidels, bettors, workers & nassau otb
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Stop scratching on holidays
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.
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > 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.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo loves to brag about his fiscal conservatism, routinely brandishing Power Point slides that show he has kept the growth of state spending at 2% or less for what’s now nine straight years. Problem is, that’s only by his accounting — and independent numbers paint a much more troubling picture.
The gov is focused, fairly enough, on state-funded spending, not cash that flows from Washington to fund federal programs. In that light, he says, he again kept the rise in outlays to 2% for the new budget year.
But the Citizens Budget Commission (among others) says otherwise. Its latest report adjusts for various fiscal gimmicks, and finds that fiscal year 2020 state spending actually jumps 4.9%.
And that follows actual growth rates of 2.8% in FY 2018 and 2.5% in FY 2017, after six years that (by the CBC’s count) did average 2% growth.
In other words, Cuomo has failed to meet his own mark for three straight years now, and the problem’s getting much worse.
The gov can try to conceal this by accounting tricks such as moving some spending off-budget or into future years, but he’s not fooling anyone who’s paying attention.
Yes, things might be worse if Cuomo weren’t at least shooting to meet his cap: The same tricks might have let him report 5 percent spending growth when it was really 9%.
But the trend suggests that this governor has met his limit when it comes to restraining New York state’s spending — which was already far too high back when he first took office in 2013.
And if he’s lost control now, the state will be facing major fiscal trouble long before 2022, when Cuomo now says he’ll be running for a fourth term.
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