Gotham
Where Bettors Go to Lose, Some Doubts
By MICHAEL POWELL
Published: September 23, 2013 17 Comments
I took a stroll through a glowing forest of slot machines — past a
hospital aide who fed ragged dollars into them and a retired transit
worker who peered into his empty wallet and a security guard who eyed
me, wondering when I was going to sit down and start losing money.
Readers’ Comments
Share your thoughts.
It was early Monday morning, and I was inside the Resort World Casino at
Aqueduct Racetrack, which looks like an airport departure lounge mated
with a pinball machine. There were no smiles and no talk, and eye
contact was reserved for the slot machine. Then I stepped outside and
squinted into a sharp morning sun at Stu Litwin, an electrician. He was
ambling toward the casino from the A train.
What do you think, I asked him, of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s plan to open up New York State to seven casinos like this? He shook his head, rueful.
“It’s a losing deal, casinos,” he said. “I’ll be honest, I should have
my head examined for coming here. You really don’t want the whole city
doing this.”
Our governor has developed a pronounced taste for gambling’s revenue
streams. He has put a constitutional referendum on the ballot to allow
full-fledged casinos, proposing to raise money for schools by letting
the industry run its fingers through the pockets of working New Yorkers.
The gambling industry now finds itself at El Dorado’s doorstep. And the
governor tells us not to worry. He is righteous, and the industry will
be carefully regulated.
It’s intriguing to examine the effort to reform a related gambling enterprise: the New York Racing Association,
now controlled by the state. This industry, which oversees racetracks,
fell into a despond of corruption a decade back, with the drugging of
horses and rigging of bets. Federal prosecutors circled.
Reform began a couple of years ago in patented Cuomo fashion, which is
to say with anonymous quotes about heads rolling. Top officials were
fired, and reform was rolled out. Mr. Cuomo installed David Skorton,
Cornell’s well-regarded president, as board chairman.
Holdovers from the troubled, pre-reform days, however, still make up a
working majority of the board. Its lack of diversity is perversely
impressive: 16 of its 17 members are white men. The other one is a white
woman.
Mr. Cuomo selected eight appointees notable less for their knowledge of
horse racing than their track record in writing checks to his campaigns.
He also named two Cuomo family retainers: the financiers Michael J. Del Giudice and Vincent Tese.
Mr. Tese, who with his wife donated $186,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s various campaigns, is an executive compensation
guru. He is a welcome sight for chief executives. While on the Bear
Stearns board, he allowed executives to fashion their compensation
packages.
At Cablevision, shareholders twice mounted campaigns to evict him from
the board. James L. Dolan, the chief executive, twice blocked these
efforts. Mr. Dolan and his father, who is chairman of the board, each
made more than $16 million last year.
Inevitably, Mr. Tese suggested that the racing association’s chief
executive needed more money. He recommended $300,000 with a $250,000
incentive pay package, much more than the current chief executive made
at his last job.
Transparency, too, has flagged. Two years ago, Getnick & Getnick,
which had been appointed by a federal court to monitor the racing
association, filed a deeply critical report. The association, it noted,
was sliding backward. Regulations had been loosened at special security
barns, intended to stop the drugging of horses. And the association
again was doing business with companies that specialize in computerized
odds-making favorable to professional gamblers. The old board promptly
fired Getnick & Getnick. The report remains sealed.
With this reform experience as prologue, let’s turn to Mr. Cuomo’s
efforts to persuade New Yorkers to approve expanded legalized gambling.
His aides took care to word the measure in what might be called the Leonid Brezhnev
Triumphal Style: “The proposed amendment,” the ballot reads, promotes
“job growth, increasing aid to schools, and permitting local governments
to lower property taxes through revenues generated.”
“The only thing they left out was ‘world peace,’ ” notes David
Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. Which
brings me back to Mr. Litwin, that stocky electrician. He talks of his
gambling as an alcoholic would of the bottle. “I’ve lost thousands of
dollars, and my wife is ready to shoot me.” He shrugged and tugged on
his black baseball cap. “She should really. It’s crazy.”
No comments:
Post a Comment