This blog is not affiliated or endorsed, by Nassau OTB, a public benefit corporation, subject to the New York Freedom
of Information Law, NY Pub Off Law Sec 84 et seq.
the majority of bettors st nassau otb do not want printing kiosks but want program and racing forms
on monday december 26 there was but one proram at a nassau otb branch and the bettirs with money to bet expressed their dipleasure at the lack of programs by tsking their money elsewhere.
the value of the loss of good will is ontangible but palpably large
bettors do not want kiosks
VEST is an acronym of Video Entertainment Systems Technology Inc. The Designing of Kisoks and the software needed yp drive the kiosks began in 1993 and after a couple years of research and development we believed we had a product and a team to fill a void in the racing industry.
Today:With 20 years experience and nearly 300 installations throughtout North America and The Caribbean, VEST is the leader of self serve programs in the Horse and Dog Racing Industry. Future:VEST is looking to introduce Sports Programs as a complement to Sports Book Facilities.
History:
VEST RACING USA
VIDEO ENTERAINMENT SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGY INC. VEST RACING USA
HEAD OFFICE: 10684 - 214 STREET EDMONTON, ALBERTA CANADA T5S 2A5 TOLL FREE: 1-866-717-8378 PHONE: 780-413-0260 FAX: 780-452-0615 EMAIL: vestracing@vestracing .com
Ken Heurter: Director of Operations vestracing@vestracing.com
Richard Heurter: Customer Service Manager richard.h@vestracing.com
Lisa Kruger: Program Processing lisa.k@vestracing.com
Thank you for contacting our office to express your concerns about the Nassau County OTB (also known as Nassau Downs) and how it is managed. The Comptroller’s Office takes constituent concerns very seriously. We sincerely appreciate it when any concerned citizen brings an issue to our attention.
You had asked the Comptroller to look into “how Nassau County OTB is managed.” I have now had the opportunity to review the extensive materials that you were kind enough to forward, as well as to review certain statutory authority relevant to this matter.
As you are aware, Nassau OTB is a public benefit corporation. Pursuant to Article V, section 1 of the New York State Constitution, the New York State Comptroller is expressly authorized to audit New York State Regional Off-Track Betting Corporations. The authority of the New York State Comptroller to audit OTB is also set forth in Article 3 of the New York General Municipal law [NY CLS Gen Mun Law §33, 34]. In addition, pursuant to Section 516 of the Racing, Pari-Mutuel Wagering and Breeding Law, regional Off-Track Betting Corporations are subject to the auditing authority of the New York State Comptroller. Indeed, his office released an audit of Nassau OTB in September 2015.
As was noted on page 5 of his September 2015 audit, statutory restrictions on the distributions of revenue from operations “significantly limits [OTB’s] ability to fund operations.” The report went on to observe that all seven (7) branch locations that were open during 2013 lost money. Id. While this office has the concurrent authority to audit the Nassau County OTB, we are not authorized to audit other OTB operations in New York State.The 2015 audit found that although “the Corporations have implemented recommendations made by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) from a prior audit,” 2015 audit at 10, “they have continued to experience fiscal decline.” Among the recommendations previously made by the NYS Comptroller were actions to be taken both by the various corporations as well as actions to be taken by the New York State Legislature.In response to the 2015 audit by the NYS Comptroller, Nassau OTB stated that it is looking to the State Legislature and the Governor to make changes to the statutory scheme for distributing revenues.
For these reasons, and because some of the major issues confronting Nassau OTB also affect the other OTB corporations (such as macroeconomic trends), it is more appropriate for your concerns to be addressed to the New York State Comptroller.
Once again, I wish to thank you for raising your concerns about Nassau OTB.
Thank you for contacting our office to express your concerns about the Nassau County OTB (also known as Nassau Downs) and how it is managed. The Comptroller’s Office takes constituent concerns very seriously. We sincerely appreciate it when any concerned citizen brings an issue to our attention.
You had asked the Comptroller to look into “how Nassau County OTB is managed.” I have now had the opportunity to review the extensive materials that you were kind enough to forward, as well as to review certain statutory authority relevant to this matter.
As you are aware, Nassau OTB is a public benefit corporation. Pursuant to Article V, section 1 of the New York State Constitution, the New York State Comptroller is expressly authorized to audit New York State Regional Off-Track Betting Corporations. The authority of the New York State Comptroller to audit OTB is also set forth in Article 3 of the New York General Municipal law [NY CLS Gen Mun Law §33, 34]. In addition, pursuant to Section 516 of the Racing, Pari-Mutuel Wagering and Breeding Law, regional Off-Track Betting Corporations are subject to the auditing authority of the New York State Comptroller. Indeed, his office released an audit of Nassau OTB in September 2015.
As was noted on page 5 of his September 2015 audit, statutory restrictions on the distributions of revenue from operations “significantly limits [OTB’s] ability to fund operations.” The report went on to observe that all seven (7) branch locations that were open during 2013 lost money. Id. While this office has the concurrent authority to audit the Nassau County OTB, we are not authorized to audit other OTB operations in New York State.The 2015 audit found that although “the Corporations have implemented recommendations made by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) from a prior audit,” 2015 audit at 10, “they have continued to experience fiscal decline.” Among the recommendations previously made by the NYS Comptroller were actions to be taken both by the various corporations as well as actions to be taken by the New York State Legislature.In response to the 2015 audit by the NYS Comptroller, Nassau OTB stated that it is looking to the State Legislature and the Governor to make changes to the statutory scheme for distributing revenues.
For these reasons, and because some of the major issues confronting Nassau OTB also affect the other OTB corporations (such as macroeconomic trends), it is more appropriate for your concerns to be addressed to the New York State Comptroller.
Once again, I wish to thank you for raising your concerns about Nassau OTB.
Thank you for contacting our office to express your concerns about the Nassau County OTB (also known as Nassau Downs) and how it is managed. The Comptroller’s Office takes constituent concerns very seriously. We sincerely appreciate it when any concerned citizen brings an issue to our attention.
You had asked the Comptroller to look into “how Nassau County OTB is managed.” I have now had the opportunity to review the extensive materials that you were kind enough to forward, as well as to review certain statutory authority relevant to this matter.
As you are aware, Nassau OTB is a public benefit corporation. Pursuant to Article V, section 1 of the New York State Constitution, the New York State Comptroller is expressly authorized to audit New York State Regional Off-Track Betting Corporations. The authority of the New York State Comptroller to audit OTB is also set forth in Article 3 of the New York General Municipal law [NY CLS Gen Mun Law §33, 34]. In addition, pursuant to Section 516 of the Racing, Pari-Mutuel Wagering and Breeding Law, regional Off-Track Betting Corporations are subject to the auditing authority of the New York State Comptroller. Indeed, his office released an audit of Nassau OTB in September 2015.
As was noted on page 5 of his September 2015 audit, statutory restrictions on the distributions of revenue from operations “significantly limits [OTB’s] ability to fund operations.” The report went on to observe that all seven (7) branch locations that were open during 2013 lost money. Id. While this office has the concurrent authority to audit the Nassau County OTB, we are not authorized to audit other OTB operations in New York State.The 2015 audit found that although “the Corporations have implemented recommendations made by the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) from a prior audit,” 2015 audit at 10, “they have continued to experience fiscal decline.” Among the recommendations previously made by the NYS Comptroller were actions to be taken both by the various corporations as well as actions to be taken by the New York State Legislature.In response to the 2015 audit by the NYS Comptroller, Nassau OTB stated that it is looking to the State Legislature and the Governor to make changes to the statutory scheme for distributing revenues.
For these reasons, and because some of the major issues confronting Nassau OTB also affect the other OTB corporations (such as macroeconomic trends), it is more appropriate for your concerns to be addressed to the New York State Comptroller.
Once again, I wish to thank you for raising your concerns about Nassau OTB.
even a little girl can count to three and read ny pml sec 109 which requires nassau itb to have three directors
christopher wright former nassau itb director stood sikently by when nassau otb operated with only two directors
christopher wright unfit
Christopher Wright, a member of the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, a state monitoring board in control of the county’s finances, has been mentioned as a possible comptroller candidate.
Wright, who has decades of private sector auditing experience, has said he has “no plans to seek public office.”
with bcg as taught by the white girl denise l faustman faustmanlab.org and the italian ristori + bcg
blacks are immune fron autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerodis, sjorgren's and type one diabetes
if the whit girl's invention works then temple can treat whites for a fee and provide free care to blacks only
tuskeegee airman got ... but the know how to read write and think?
More than you can say fir msny other smericans
vaccinste whites only at temple shoot em eith bcg
Hospitals in Safety Net Brace for Health Care Law’s Repeal
PHILADELPHIA — Jason Colston Sr. went to the emergency room at Temple University Hospital last month with his calf swollen to twice its normal size. A bacterial infection had entered his bloodstream, requiring him to spend nine days at Temple, where patients are overwhelmingly poor.
Mr. Colston, 36, had no insurance through his job at a 7-Eleven, but it turned out he was eligible for Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Temple helped him enroll as soon as he was admitted, and Medicaid paid for his stay and continuing treatment.
Before the health law, the hospital had to absorb the cost of caring for many uninsured patients like Mr. Colston. Now, with President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress vowing to dismantle the law, Temple and other hospitals serving the poor are bracing for harsh financial consequences that could have a serious effect on the care they provide.
Since the election, hospitals have been among the loudest voices against wholesale repeal of the health law. In a letter to Mr. Trump and congressional leaders this month, the two biggest hospital trade groups warned of “an unprecedented public health crisis” and said hospitals stood to lose $165 billion through 2026 if more than 20 million people lose the insurance they gained under the law. They predicted widespread layoffs, cuts in outpatient care and services for the mentally ill, and even hospital closings.
Here in Pennsylvania, where the health law has brightened the financial outlook of hospitals statewide, many are scrambling to assess how repeal would affect their bottom line and the patients they serve. The stakes are particularly high for safety-net hospitals like Temple, but even more prosperous hospitals face uncertainty after investing in new ways to deliver care under the law.
Temple executives estimate their system could lose as much as $45 million a year if the law were entirely repealed, which would return it to the losses it posted for years before the health law took effect.
“We are the de facto community hospital in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country,” said Robert Lux, the senior vice president, treasurer and chief financial officer of Temple University Health System, which includes two general hospitals and a cancer center. “Any kind of change like this would not only push Temple University Hospital into financial extremis, it would do the same thing for our entire system.”
Not far from Temple, Main Line Health, a nonprofit hospital system in the affluent Philadelphia suburbs, is far better positioned to weather the financial impact of repeal. While Temple has one of the poorest patient populations in the state — about half of its patients are on Medicaid — Main Line, which has an outpatient clinic in an upscale mall and another with a fitness center outfitted with filtered saltwater pools, has few Medicaid patients.
Still, even hospitals serving affluent populations have reason to be nervous about a future without the health law. Main Line has invested substantially in response to the law’s push to base hospital pay on patient outcomes instead of the amount of medical services provided. Repealing the law would create uncertainty about the future of this new paradigm, which has forced hospitals to rethink how they deliver care.
“I’m dreading the unpredictability,” said John J. Lynch III, Main Line’s president and chief executive.
Over all, the health law has improved the financial outlook of Pennsylvania hospitals significantly, even though the state was a year late in expanding Medicaid. The former governor, Tom Corbett, a Republican, initially balked, and the program did not expand here until 2015. Still, hospital operating margins statewide increased to about 5.5 percent on average in 2015, from 4.25 percent in 2014, according to the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania. The amount of care provided to patients who cannot pay dropped by 8.6 percent on average.
North Philadelphia, where Temple is based, is among the poorest neighborhoods in the nation. Many of its residents live in deep poverty, a census designation that means their income is less than half the federal poverty level of $24,300 for a family of four. That helps explain why Temple is so dependent on Medicaid revenue, and the high stakes of repeal here.
Under the health law, hospitals that served a large number of poor and uninsured patients agreed to a series of funding cuts in exchange for getting far more patients with insurance coverage. Temple has lost about $11 million so far in these federal funds, known as disproportionate share payments, Mr. Lux said.
But like other hospitals in the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the law, it has made up that revenue in part through the Medicaid expansion. It recorded about 13,000 more visits from patients with Medicaid coverage in 2015, the first year Pennsylvania expanded Medicaid eligibility, and at least as many this year. Still, Temple is barely turning a profit: It had operating income of $3.6 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, despite revenue of $1.7 billion.
“You still have a pretty fragile enterprise,” Mr. Lux said, noting that Medicaid pays hospitals and doctors far less than Medicareand private insurance. “Our current state of stability could be broken pretty quickly.”
So, too, could Temple’s efforts to connect its newly insured patients with preventive care instead of waiting until they show up in the emergency room with advanced, expensive illnesses. Dr. Robert McNamara, chairman of emergency medicine at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, said he had seen more than a few uninsured people arrive in the emergency room with kidney failure, needing costly dialysis for the rest of their lives because they had lived with high blood pressure for so long.
Main Line Health’s financial picture is much stronger, and will most likely remain so even if the health law is repealed and replaced with a program that leaves far fewer people insured. Main Line ended the 2016 fiscal year with $106.8 million in operating income and a 6.5 percent operating margin, compared with Temple’s margin of 0.2 percent.
Still, Main Line has invested substantially in efforts to improve the care it provides its patients while lowering the cost, as the Affordable Care Act encourages. As with many hospitals across the country, these efforts — like preventing readmissions and focusing more heavily on primary care, especially for patients with chronic diseases — have caused the system’s inpatient population to drop.
“As we decrease our volume, looking at providing care differently, that’s financially impacting us,” Mr. Lynch said.
He added that over time, the law’s slowing of Medicare payment increases added up to “real money.” The study commissioned by the hospital associations found that unless the annual increase in Medicare reimbursements is restored to what it was before the health law passed, hospitals will face additional losses of about $290 billion by 2026.
In the end, though, Main Line’s far more robust revenue, because of its large number of commercially insured patients, all but guarantee it will not have to worry — for now — about cutting programs or plans. It is installing a new electronic records system and has spent $700 million renovating its hospitals over the last few years.
“If you don’t have a strong payer mix or a healthy bottom line,” Mr. Lynch said, “it’s very difficult to do those things.”
One major question for Temple and other safety-net hospitals is whether states would restore supplemental funds or programs that defrayed the cost of caring for the uninsured before the health law took effect. Pennsylvania, for example, paid for emergency medical care for certain low-income people who did not qualify for Medicaid. This allowed Temple to be paid for their inpatient care, but often not for the care they needed after being discharged.
“We don’t know that that program would come back,” Mr. Lux said, adding that the program used to pay for about $23 million a year worth of care provided at Temple University Hospital.
Mr. Colston, who was still returning daily to Temple for intravenous antibiotics a month after his discharge, would have qualified to have most of his inpatient costs met under the old state-financed program. Paul Fabian, who received a double lung transplant at Temple last year after getting a subsidized private insurance policy from the Affordable Care Act marketplace, would not have qualified at all. Mr. Fabian, who suffered from emphysema and chronic lung failure, said he sold his truck to afford his $262 monthly premiums.
“If you walk into the E.R. they have to help you,” Mr. Fabian, 61, said. “But if you have a condition like I had, what’s the hospital’s obligation?”
Temple officials said that without insurance, Mr. Fabian would have had to endure a two-year waiting period to qualify for Medicare coverage for his disability.
“We were finally in a situation where for most of our patients there was a coverage option,” said Anita Colon, Temple’s director of patient financial services, already speaking about the health law in the past tense. “Now there’s just a total unknown about what will be left.”
H.I.V. Cases Surpass a Million in Russia, but Little Is Done
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Quietly, the number of Russians who have received a positive H.I.V. diagnosis passed the one million mark this year. There is, however, little indication that the government will commit adequate resources to stem the acceleration of the virus from high-risk groups into the general population.
About 850,000 Russians carry H.I.V. and an additional 220,000 have died since the late 1980s, said Vadim Pokrovsky, the longtime head of the Moscow-based Federal AIDS Center, who estimated that at least another 500,000 cases of H.I.V. have gone undiagnosed.
Although the label “epidemic” prompts denials from some senior officials, experts on the front lines like Mr. Pokrovsky are calling it just that. The overall estimate of victims constitutes about 1 percent of Russia’s population of 143 million, enough to be considered an epidemic, they argued. Beyond that, they said that heterosexual sex would soon top intravenous drug use as the main means of infection.
“This can already be considered a threat to the entire nation,” Mr. Pokrovsky said, noting that the caseload is increasing by about 10 percent a year. In 2016, 100,000 new infections are anticipated, about 275 daily. It is the largest H.I.V. epidemic in Europe and among the highest rates of infection globally.
Despite the grim milestone, experts do not expect much change in Russia, where victims still face the kind of stigma prevalent in the 1980s in the West and where continuing trench warfare between the Kremlin and independent nongovernmental organizations saps collective efforts. In addition, some prominent voices push “family values” as the ideal prevention program.
In many ways, Russia’s fight against H.I.V. is a case study in the constant tension between civil society and a Kremlin under President Vladimir V. Putin; public activity outside government control is considered inherently suspect. Tensions heightened this year after the Justice Ministry blackballed a number of bantam N.G.O.s involved in combating H.I.V./AIDS as “foreign agents” because they received grants from abroad.
Anton Krasovsky, a prominent talk show host fired in January 2013 after coming out as gay on air, says he has spent his personal savings building an N.G.O. that tries to bridge that divide.
“Since we are not talking about fighting Putin, but fighting a virus, people have to understand that they can fight this virus only if they are on the same side as Putin,” Mr. Krasovsky said. “It is impossible to change the situation without coming to some kind of an agreement.”
The president has remained largely silent on H.I.V. Over all, activists said, the combination of indifference toward victims, government financial austerity, hostility toward foreign funds and a powerful camp of AIDS deniers all amounts to the lack of a coherent national effort.
Experts criticized a new, rather vague Russian government strategy on fighting H.I.V. that was released in October for lacking a plan of execution or any new money.
Despite that, both sides in the H.I.V. battle agree that Russia has made some progress. The fact that a national strategy exists — as well as an advertising program promoting H.I.V. tests backed by Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of the prime minister — at least implies some high-level interest.
In St. Petersburg, one married couple, Dr. Tatiana N. Vinogradova and Andrei Skvortsov, straddles the government-N.G.O. divide on the issue.
Dr. Vinogradova, slim beneath her white coat, with bobbed brown hair and beige stilettos, is a third-generation H.I.V. warrior. Her grandmother, an infectious-diseases specialist, treated one of the first patients in St. Petersburg in the late 1980s and pushed the city to establish an AIDS Center. Dr. Vinogradova’s mother ran it, and she herself is now its deputy head of scientific research.
Mr. Skvortsov, wiry, scrappy and H.I.V. positive — a reformed drug addict and ex-convict — runs a small N.G.O. called Patients in Control. It was founded in 2010 to try to cajole, pressure and embarrass both federal and local governments into providing government-guaranteed treatment.
At the St. Petersburg AIDS Center, Dr. Vinogradova, 41, has seen the prevalence among drug addicts shrink while cases among heterosexual couples soar.
“Calling it an epidemic would be akin to admitting that the government let the problem get out of control over the past 30 years,” she said, explaining why the government avoids the term. But she uses the national strategy and any official statements she can find to try to wring more money out of politicians. “This is Russia, so everything has to be top down to get anything done.”
The couple has tried to use their marriage to help break the stigma that the disease is an untreatable plague limited to drug addicts, homosexuals or others likely to die anyway.
“I watch people jump back a meter when he says he is living with H.I.V.,” Dr. Vinogradova said, with older medical professionals particularly still fearful despite the raft of evidence that anyone taking antiviral drugs is not infectious. “Now whenever I hear about H.I.V. discrimination, I take it as a personal offense.”
When her husband needed an operation last year to repair with a metal implant a collarbone broken in a motorcycle accident, the surgeon refused after discovering his H.I.V. status. Mr. Skvortsov, 37, recently appeared on a talk show with Evgeniya Prokhoda, an H.I.V. activist in the southern city of Krasnodar, and one of the first Russians to speak about carrying the virus on national television without hiding her face.
She detailed the gantlet of fear and discrimination she had faced, including when authorities put her son in an orphanage for about a year after her own mother sued to have him removed from home. The day after she appeared on television, Mrs. Prokhoda was fired.
Activists and experts always come back to the lack of government support as the root problem.
Under World Health Organization guidelines, to reduce the spread of the disease, at least 90 percent of H.I.V.-positive patients should receive antiviral drugs.
In Russia, a little more than 37 percent receive such treatment, according to government statistics. “The prevention programs are not working, the coverage is not sufficient to break the curve,” said Vinay P. Saldanha, the Unaids regional director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Russia is among five countries that account for almost half the new infections globally; the others are South Africa, Nigeria, India and Uganda, according to Unaids figures, although in some of them, a much higher percentage of the overall population is infected.
Most of the $338 million annual Russian federal H.I.V. budget is spent on medicine, and almost nothing goes to preventive education. Veronika Skvortsova, the health minister, has repeatedly called expanding treatment programs a government priority. (The minister is not related to Andrei Skvortsov.) After a deep recession, however, little new money has materialized.
At the same time, the Russian Orthodox Church and some politicians promote “conservative values” as the best way to combat H.I.V.
Patriarch Kirill called for “moral education,” stressing that the “establishment of family values, ideals of chastity and marital fidelity” should be at the forefront of curbing the virus.
Both the government and the church staunchly oppose sex education for children. One senior government official stated that classical literature was the best teacher.
The state also adamantly opposes methadone for drug addicts, sometimes denigrated as a “narcoliberal” scheme. In other countries, methadone programs are used both to treat and to monitor patients infected by intravenous needles.
The emphasis on traditional values dismays those fighting the disease. “Traditional values just means leaving everything as it is,” Mr. Pokrovsky said. “If we have traditional values and do nothing, the epidemic will keep spreading.”
Compounding the problems, the federal government has tried to silence organizations that challenged its policies, labeling them “foreign agents” for receiving grants from abroad, forcing some to close.
The Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice, which hands out free needles and condoms in southern Moscow, now has to staple a small label to its plastic bags saying “Foreign Agent” as required by law. Recipients said they could not care less, but it means that the foundation cannot work with government organizations.
“H.I.V. is not a personal problem, it is a social problem, and it should be solved as a social problem,” Elena Plotnikova, who works for the foundation, said as she handed out supplies. “The basic attitude of the government is: You made a bad decision and we are not going to help you.”
N.G.O.s are considered crucial to reaching populations that avoid government contact, including drug addicts, prostitutes and gay men. Help varies widely from city to city. St. Petersburg is perhaps the most enlightened, treating all comers to its clinic and sponsoring an advertising campaign.
Dr. Vinogradova and Mr. Skvortsov appear together on one poster encouraging people to get tested. The couple is startlingly open about their sex life, stressing that his being on antiviral drugs means that she remains H.I.V. negative even though they do not use condoms.
In the poster, wearing navy blue shirts, they stare into each other’s eyes. “I know that there are no barriers to my love,” reads the text. “H.I.V. is not an obstacle to creating a family; it’s possible to live a long life with H.I.V.”