If the trains run John Samuelson the OTBs must be open!

Help the State of New York, New York Bettors, the OTBs and those who believe in NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3 John Samuelson. Tell Governor Andrew Cuomo you will bet him.... that if he dares ask New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for an Opinion he will learn that NY PML Sec 105 does not apply to the OTBs, that NY PML Sec 105 violates the rights of betting TWU members secured by NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3 and that NY  PML Sec 105 is vague, indefinite and/or overly broad as TWU betting members who observe the Gregorian and Julian Calendars do not observe "Easter Sunday" on the same Sunday in all years.

With tracks running all across the US every day of the year there is no reason for any OTB to be closed on any day of the year that bettors want to bet and union workers may or may not wish to work. It should be noted that Teamsters Local 858 President Barry Yomtov was paid double time when he worked on any Sunday as a NYC OTB Manager. NYC OTB is defunct. Bankrupt and its union workers looking for work.

See also

Open On 1st Palm Sunday, Otb Rakes In $2m - New York Daily News

articles.nydailynews.com/.../18220335_1_racing-and-wagering-boar...Cached

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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.

 

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Subway union chief’s tough talk must lead to wise bargaining TWU’s

Samuelsen has to face N.Y.’s fiscal realities

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Originally Published: Sunday, November 20 2011, 12:30 PM
Updated: Sunday, November 20 2011, 12:30 PM

Corey Sipkin/New York Daily News

• MTA's budget gaps to grow
• LIRR engineer pulls in $250G with OT pay
• Union kicks off protests vs. MTA
• Everyone feels crunch in MTA, but not its boss
• MTA blew $722G in safety incentives, report reveals
• MTA's overtime pay a runaway train at $590 million, state audit finds
• 
  

A s John Samuelsen readies to negotiate his first contract as president of the Transport Workers Union, the future of the city rides on his willingness to be reasonable.

Samuelsen kicked off talks with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by declaring that he rejects out of hand accepting 0% raises in line with the pattern set by Gov. Cuomo and state workers.

“We did not cause this economic problem,” Samuelsen told the Daily News Editorial Board on Thursday, “and we’re not going to pay for it . . . by having the standard of living of transit worker families deteriorate.”

That’s an understandable opening gambit in talks over a contract that expires Jan 15. But Samuelsen must recognize both that the MTA is in deep financial trouble and that taxpayers and straphangers cannot afford to foot the bill for wage hikes with no strings attached.

By Samuelsen’s estimation, every 1 percentage point wage hike carries a price tag of $25 million. He and MTA chief Joe Lhota should start to work now on finding productivity and other labor savings that could be used to finance raises.

Let’s state for the record that the TWU’s rank and file are not getting rich on base salaries that average $62,000 a year. They play a crucial role in keeping New York moving while contending with surly passengers, rush-hour gridlock, noxious exhaust and rat-infested subway tunnels.

At the same time, let’s also remember that over the last three years — despite low inflation and rising unemployment — TWU workers have enjoyed raises totaling 11% while contributing a mere 1.5% of their pay for top-notch health benefits. They can also look forward to retiring after 25 years at the minimum age of 55 with guaranteed health coverage.

Meantime, bus and subway riders have been hit with fare hikes and service cuts. The cost of a 30-day MetroCard leaped by 36% — from $76 to $104 — over the past three years.

Shrewdly, Samuelsen says his union aims to stick up for riders by pushing an entirely new type of demand — asking, for example, that the contract guarantee staffing levels on subway platforms and minimal waits between buses.

This is transparent posturing for public support. The last thing MTA management needs is to have its hands tied by niggling work rules.

Also wrongheaded is Samuelsen’s rhetoric in favor of extending the state tax surcharge on the wealthy that is to expire Dec. 31. That levy hits the top 5% of taxpayers who make 45% of the income. But even without it, they contribute about 54% of the state’s income tax revenue.

More welcome is his posture on a repeat of the illegal strike that paralyzed the city during the 2005 holiday season. He didn’t rule anything out but signaled that the union is ready to stay at the bargaining table past the Jan. 15 deadline.

That’s where the necessary compromises will get done. And that’s where Samuelsen belongs.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/subway-union-chief-tough-talk-lead-wise-bargaining-twu-article-1.980377#ixzz1eOrHRWG4

unlike the MTA OTBs have become defunct in bankruptcy court.

Chatter see wsj.com November 21 @B7

Dear tellis@usc.edu:
Have you considered the chatter that existed about New York City OTB prior to its demise in bankruptcy court and its effect on the other OTBs (public benefit corporations) in New York State? 

Joe Bruno and Al Smith AKA Al D'Amato

What exactly has Al Smith done for Nassau OTB, time, billing records etc?
Different styles or modus operandi?  



Times Topics > People > B > Bruno, Joseph L.

E-MAIL

Joseph L. Bruno

Jin Lee/Bloomberg News

Updated: Nov. 17, 2011
Joseph L. Bruno, an upstate Republican, was majority leader of the New York State Senate from 1994 to June 2008. During that period, he was one of the “three men in a room,’' the common phrase for the way virtually all state business is settled in private by the governor and leaders of the Legislature’s two houses.
That power allowed Mr. Bruno to direct billions of dollars in public and private investment to the capital region, parts of which he represented as senator, and to win a long list of friends and allies. To his constituents, he was known simply as Joe, the dapper, grandfatherly figure whose earmarks provided thousands of dollars for local Little League teams and firefighter squads. But a federal investigation exploring his business dealings led him to resign in 2008, and in July he was indicted on eight federal felony counts.
In 2009, Mr. Bruno was found guilty on two of those and was sentenced to two years.
In November 2011, a federal appeals court overturned the corruption conviction of Mr. Bruno.
But the three-judge court rejected Mr. Bruno’s effort to avoid a new trial on charges that he committed fraud by taking bribes or kickbacks totaling at least $240,000 from a businessman seeking his help in the Legislature.
The decision overturning his conviction had been expected. Federal prosecutors conceded during his appeal that his 2009 conviction should be overturned because of a ruling in 2010 by the United States Supreme Court that undermined the government’s legal claims against him.
In a decision on an unrelated case the Supreme Court ruled that the federal honest-services law could not be used to prosecute defendants for hiding conflicts of interest. The court left open, however, the possibility of prosecution based on kickbacks and bribery.
The federal prosecutors in Albany have long said that they planned to retry Mr. Bruno, and they have said that they would seek a new indictment. In its unanimous ruling, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, rebuffed Mr. Bruno’s claim that a new trial would violate his right to avoid double jeopardy.
In unvarnished language, the panel said the prosecutors had presented evidence from which a new jury could conclude that Mr. Bruno violated a federal law that makes it a crime to deprive people of “honest services.”

Read More...

The court said a new jury could conclude, for example, that one $40,000 payment was “an illegitimate gift” disguised as payment for a racehorse, Christy’s Night Out, that was not worth much.
Mr. Bruno has insisted that the case reflected nothing more than the fact that New York’s legislators often have other jobs. But the case was widely seen as a test of whether the courts could limit what have often been seen as lax ethical standards in Albany. The case highlighted how Mr. Bruno mixed private and government duties and, the appeals court said, showed that he used state employees to help him collect “exorbitant consulting fees.”
In their initial case, the federal prosecutors charged that Mr. Bruno committed fraud by failing to disclose conflicts of interest when he took money in exchange for help on government matters.
Background
The trial drew the kind of fascination not seen since 1991, when the Assembly speaker at the time, Mel Miller, went on trial for fraud. (His conviction was overturned in 1993.)  Much of the case against Mr. Bruno hinged on the degree to which he disclosed potential conflicts of interest between his private business and his official duties, like soliciting pension fund investments from labor unions with interests before the Legislature.
In June 2008, amid signs that a federal investigation against Mr. Bruno was intensifying, he announced that he would not seek re-election and relinquished his leadership position. And in July 2008, he resigned from the Senate. He took a job as the chief executive officer of an information-technology company, CMA Consulting Services, that has numerous state contracts.
On Jan. 23, 2009, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Bruno on eight counts including mail and wire fraud. Mr. Bruno was charged with reaping millions of dollars from companies seeking to do business with the state, or from labor unions, capping a long-running investigation into one of New York’s most powerful political figures.
Mr. Bruno was charged under an anti-corruption law making it a crime to deprive citizens of honest services from their elected officials. The Supreme Court ruled on June 24, 2010, that the statute was unconstitutionally vague and could no longer be used to prosecute officials for concealing a conflict of interest. But the ruling also left open the possibility that federal prosecutors might use the honest-services statute to prosecute state and local officials in bribery and kickback schemes.
During the 2009 trial, Mr. Bruno was accused of collecting more than $3 million over a 13-year period, beginning in 1993, from a handful of businessmen seeking state contracts and grants, as well as contracts to manage pension fund investments for at least 16 labor unions. Mr. Bruno repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Two vastly different portraits of Mr. Bruno emerged from prosecutors and defense lawyers. Prosecutors described Mr. Bruno as a schoolyard bully whose political muscle in Albany was quietly deployed on behalf of his clients, including investment firms seeking union pension fund money and companies seeking state grants.
Mr. Bruno, the defense said, was a hardworking part-time lawmaker legally entitled to earn a living in the private sector and determined to follow the rules as best he understood them. The verdict capped a month-long trial that captivated the state political establishment and laid bare the unseemly side of New York’s Legislature, where most lawmakers hold down second jobs in the private sector but are required to disclose very little about what they are paid to do.
Prosecutors contended that Mr. Bruno had failed to disclose conflicts between his private business dealings and his official business as Senate majority leader, the powerful post that he held for almost 14 years. They also say he used a sham consulting business as a way to conceal the true nature of his business interests
Prosecutors brought forward more than 70 witnesses and a trove of over 200 e-mail messages as well as handwritten notes, calendar entries and memoranda, many culled from the historically secretive State Senate, which Republicans controlled under Mr. Bruno.
The trial also delved intimately into Mr. Bruno’s private business, which spanned work for more than a dozen companies during more than a decade and a half, earning Mr. Bruno roughly $3.2 million in fees.

Marion Olle, Susan Oddo, John Ryder, Local 858 Trustees and Laura

Campione Secretary Treasurer and Barry Yomtov President

Proudly Present Critical Status as they merger Teamsters Local 858 with Local 707

see below


http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/notice030810016.pdf

barry yomtov and laura campione proudly announce critical status

merger with Local 707

http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/notice030810016.pdf

barry yomtov scoffs at critical status as he is the last NYC OTB Manager to continue collecting from compelled union dues as President of Teamster Local 858 and now a Critical Local 707 Business Agent

Barry Yomtov and Laura Campione proudly announce Local 707

DFR Pension '10 trial:Layout 1

www.hudson.org/files/documents/DFR_Pension_2010_highres.pdfSimilar

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File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
by D FURCHTGOTT-ROTH
a “fifth fund,” but the PBGC would, at the request of the plans, have the authority to take over the pension obligations ...... Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Plan ...... ties; it increases annually to 100 percent in 2011. ...

and Nasssau OTB and Yonkers et al will do? when?

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Monday, November 14, 2011Last Update: 9:36 AM PT

OTBs Fight Subsidy to Racetracks By MARLENE KENNEDY   ShareThis      SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (CN) - New York's five off-track betting corporations want to stop paying state harness tracks a subsidy to protect their traditional nighttime horse-racing revenue against simulcast competition, now that most races are run in the afternoon.      In an Article 78 petition in Schenectady County Court, the OTBs ask that the decade-old subsidy, known as a maintenance of effort or MOE payment, be ended for the days the harness tracks run races outside the "protected nighttime hours," which begin at 6 p.m.      The petitioners are Capital District Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. in Schenectady, Catskill Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. in Pomona and Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. in Batavia - all of which operate in upstate cities and counties - and their Long Island counterparts, Nassau Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. in Hempstead and Suffolk Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. in Hauppauge.      Their complaint against the New York State Racing and Wagering Board and six harness tracks claims that despite a letter from the OTBs pointing out that MOE payments "are not due to regional harness tracks ... for those days that they conducted races outside of the protected nighttime hours," the subsidies were kept in place and the board "gave no rationale or explanation for its determination in this regard."      The OTBs sent the letter before the board set the 2010 MOE payments, on Sept. 1 this year, according to the complaint. And because the harness tracks have to file an annual race schedule, the Racing and Wagering Board had firsthand evidence of afternoon versus evening racing, the complaint states.      Six harness track operators were named as respondents. Five of the tracks - Saratoga Raceway, Buffalo Raceway, Tioga Downs, Vernon Downs and Monticello Raceway - "held substantial numbers of their races outside the protected nighttime hours," according to the complaint. The sixth respondent operates Yonkers Raceway.      All six tracks are within one or more OTB regions. Monticello Raceway, for instance, operates in the Catskill OTB, Nassau OTB and Suffolk OTB regions.      The OTBs, public benefit corporations that date to the 1970s, were set up to channel money from illegal betting parlors to the government. They offer pari-mutuel wagering on harness and thoroughbred horse races to bettors who can't make it to a track. The races may be in New York, in other states and in foreign countries.      Money wagered on a race at a track is combined with the bets made at the OTBs to create a pari-mutuel pool. From that, payouts are made for winning tickets - less percentages specified by state racing law for "retained commissions," according to the Article 78 complaint.      Those commissions are distributed according to a complex formula set by statute that includes New York tracks (for use in operations and to fund horsemen's purses); the state (in taxes and fees); and state-chartered funds for the benefit of horse breeders.      Finally, the complaint states: "The balance remaining after such statutorily mandated distributions and taxes, and after payment of the OTBs' operating expenses and debt service, is required to be paid to local governments within the regions of each of the OTBs."      New York's OTBs are allowed to display simulcasts of races - televised live broadcasts - and to accept bets on them. As with the on-track wagers, money bet on simulcast races becomes part of the retained commissions to be distributed to industry and government.      Only since 2003 have the OTBs been allowed to conduct simulcasts of nighttime thoroughbred races. That was also when "the harness racing industry was able to secure the passage of the 'maintenance of effort' provision ... designed to protect regional harness tracks from competition and potential loss of market share due to the simulcasting of thoroughbred racing during the protected nighttime hours by preserving the then-existing levels of certain commissions received by regional harness tracks from the OTBs," according to the complaint.      The Racing and Wagering Board, which regulates horse-racing and wagering in the state, sets the harness tracks' MOE payments, which the complaint states must be "at least as much as they received in 2002 (the year before the statute was enacted) from the OTBs for nighttime harness racing." (Parentheses in complaint.)      But also since 2003, according to the complaint, the Saratoga, Buffalo and Monticello raceways "made the business decision to conduct races during the afternoon hours and not during the protected nighttime hours."      Last year, those tracks, plus Tioga Downs and Vernon Downs "held substantial numbers" of their races in the afternoon.      The petition comes as New York's tracks and OTBs are struggling.      Last year, the total bet at the state's OTBs and harness and thoroughbred tracks was $2.04 billion, down from $2.61 billion in 2007, according to a July report from the Racing and Wagering Board.      Vernon Downs filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and closed for 2 years before reopening under new owners. And late last year, the New York City OTB filed for bankruptcy and closed abruptly; state lawmakers have held hearings this year about whether to consolidate the remaining OTB operations.      The Article 78 complaint also claims that the MOE payments run contrary to a 2009 governor's executive order that tried to dial back on state mandates. No state agency is supposed to attempt any action that could become a burden on local governments "without an accounting of the impact," according to the complaint.      MOE payments made to harness tracks that race in the afternoon are tantamount to mandates, the complaint states, because local governments get a share of the OTBs' retained commissions.      "The MOE payments reduce, dollar for dollar, payments made by the OTBs to local governments and, thus, increase property taxes of the local governments," according to the complaint.      The OTBs seek declaratory judgment that the MOE program violates the executive order, and ending the MOE payments to the tracks for day races.      The OTBs are represented by Francis Smith with McNamee, Lochner, Titus & Williams, of Albany.