Dear Pastor Scott Kraniak:

Please share with us your opinion about whether Nassau OTB, a public benefit corporation, that has not yet filed for bankruptcy like Suffolk OTB, may close on Roman Catholic Easter Sunday and Roman Catholic Palm Sunday in preference to Greek Orthodox Easter Sunday and Greek Orthodox Palm Sunday. See also NY Const. Art. 1, Sec. 3. Tracks run all across the United States every day that bettors want to bet. Let workers who wish to work, work, bettors that wish to bet, bet, and people that wish to pray on their holy days do so without the State of New York expressing its religious preference.  NY PML Sec 109 does not pass the laugh test.

http://cbcwebsite.com/#/pastor-scott-kraniak/4548746029

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

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.

Character Study

Pray, Then Hit the Gas

A Pastor Offers Prayer for Drivers at a Long Island Raceway

Dave Sanders for The New York Times

In Life's Race, the Pastor Burns Rubber: The Rev. Scott Kraniak, chaplain at the Riverhead Raceway stock car track on Long Island, asks God to watch over drivers seeking the checkered flag.

By COREY KILGANNON

Published: August 30, 2013

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Just before the cars took the track at Riverhead Raceway on a recent Saturday night, a souped-up 1965 Comet Cyclone roared out and roused the crowd by squealing and smoking its wheels and peeling out.

The Particulars
Name Scott Kraniak
Age 50
Where He’s From Centereach, Long Island
What He Is Racetrack chaplain
Telling Detail Pastor Kraniak says that even nonreligious drivers welcome his prayers because “who doesn’t want God on their side?”

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The hot rod was driven by a man in a racing official’s outfit that, like his car, bore emblems reading “Racing With Jesus.” This is the Rev. Scott Kraniak, 50, who, as the track’s chaplain, performs this prerace ritual every Saturday evening at this track at the eastern end of the Long Island Expressway where it splits into routes to the Hamptons and the North Fork.

After leaving rubber for Jesus, Pastor Kraniak parked the car and hopped up on his trackside pulpit, a concrete block overlooking the quarter-mile asphalt oval. The location allows him to bless each car entering the track and preside through a chain-link fence over a congregation driving at breakneck speeds, offering up exhaust and deafening roars instead of amens and hymns.

“A lot of people think I’m here in case someone dies,” he said. “Really, I’m praying they don’t crash. If they do, I pray they come out O.K. These guys know they can get hurt out there, and they like to know someone has prayed over them.” Pastor Kraniak, an ordained nondenominational Christian minister, has been the chaplain for nearly eight years at this track, which was built in 1949 and is one of the oldest stock car tracks in the country.

He holds prayer meetings around the Comet during afternoon time trials, and puts out free Bibles, recordings of race-themed sermons and a donation box.

“I don’t pray for people to win, because that wouldn’t be right — everyone wants to win,” he said. “It’s more that they come back alive.”

Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Before each race, the pastor hustles from one idling car to the next, blessing the vehicles with a hand upon the roof and a brief prayer through the window. This continues throughout the half-dozen divisions, including racing buggies, modified pickups, Nascar-style cars, the demolition derby and school-bus smack-ups.

Pastor Kraniak also helps keep order when track competition ignites fights in the pit area among rival families and pit crews. Shortly after he mentioned this duty, two drivers caused a fracas. Pastor Kraniak wedged himself in the middle and calmed things down.

“I call myself a spiritual bouncer here, because you do get a lot of fights,” he said. “When the chaplain shows up, the guys do chill out, watch their language and avoid fighting.”

Pastor Kraniak also presides, in his track uniform, over race-themed weddings and even funerals for racing enthusiasts.

He has visited a fair share of drivers who have been hospitalized, but there have been no driver deaths during his tenure, he said, adding, “That’s to God’s credit, not mine.”

He greeted Marisa Niederauer, 27, of Hicksville, N.Y., next to her 600-horsepower racecar and said a short prayer: “Father in heaven, watch over this driver and keep her safe. Amen.”

Ms. Niederauer keeps a picture of Jesus duct-taped to her dashboard and rosary beads hanging from her roll bars, but her team name is No Mercy Racing and her nickname is She-Devil because “my horns come out in the car,” she said.

Pastor Kraniak is married with three sons and lives nearby in Centereach, where he grew up an atheist and a heavy-metal drummer, partying hard and working as an auto mechanic. By age 23, he became a Christian and began hanging out with others at car shows and hot-rod cruise nights. He was ordained and founded a ministry of hot-rod enthusiasts called V8’s for Christ.

Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Racing With Jesus Ministries, a national organization that pairs chaplains with tracks, connected him with Riverhead Raceway. Since then, many track regulars have joined his Centereach Bible Church, whose congregation already included many racing enthusiasts who enjoyed his race-themed sermons.

“I saw it as a way of bringing my product to where the people are,” Pastor Kraniak said, adding that there are few better places to engage people about confronting their own mortality, and few better themes than racing for religious allegory.

“The Bible says life is a race,” he said. “You have the yellow flag telling you, ‘Caution, go slow.’ Everyone wants to see the checkered flag, to win the race. And the white flag telling you it’s the final lap — well, we never know when that comes.”

E-mail: character@nytimes.com