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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.
News
NRA Sues Cuomo, Supt. Vullo Over Regulatory Actions Against Gun Liability Insurers
The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit against Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Department of Financial Services and Superintendent Maria Vullo in federal district court in Albany on Friday alleging that they are depriving NRA members’ constitutional rights in their regulatory actions against insurers providing gun owner liability insurance in the state.
The NRA’s complaint is seeking damages for what the organization alleges are violations of members’ free speech, equal protection and due process under state and federal laws following DFS-imposed consent orders and fines earlier this month against a Chubb Ltd. subsidiary and an insurance broker that sold NRA-branded “Carry Guard” gun owner liability policies in New York. The insurer, Illinois Union, and the broker, Lockton Affinity, have agreed to stop selling those policies, which cover liability for criminal proceedings stemming from ownership of a legal firearm. Lloyd’s of London also announced Wednesday that it had barred syndicates from selling similar NRA gun owner liability coverage. Lockton Affinity paid a $7 million fine. Chubb paid a $1.3 million fine.
The lawsuit charges that Cuomo and Vullo have engaged in a “campaign” to coerce insurers and banks to stop offering services from the NRA. The NRA is seeking injunctive relief and a jury trial and to “cease and refrain from further selective enforcement” of insurance laws. The complaint was submitted by William Brewer III and other attorneys of Brewer Attorneys & Counselors in New York and Dallas on behalf of the NRA and Charles Cooper, Michael Kirk and other attorneys of Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.
A phone call seeking comment from DFS in New York was not returned on Friday. Cuomo said the lawsuit is “a futile and desperate attempt to advance its dangerous agenda to sell more guns,” according to an Associated Press report Friday afternoon.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, No. 1:18-cv-566(EK/CFH).
(Reuters) - The National Rifle Association on Friday sued New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state’s financial regulator for engaging in what it said was a “blacklisting campaign” aimed at swaying banks and insurers to stop doing business with the gun advocacy group, according to a complaint.
Cuomo and the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) aimed to deprive the NRA of its right to “speak freely about gun-related issues and defend the Second Amendment,” the group said in the suit, referring to part of the U.S. Constitution that protects the right of Americans to bear arms.
“The NRA’s lawsuit is a futile and desperate attempt to advance its dangerous agenda to sell more guns,” Cuomo said in a statement, calling the suit “frivolous.”
The NRA’s lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, follows a $7 million fine on May 2 imposed by NYDFS against insurance broker Lockton Cos LLC, which administered an NRA-branded insurance program known as “Carry Guard.”
On May 7, NYDFS fined insurer Chubb Ltd and its Illinois Union Insurance Company unit $1.3 million for having “unlawfully provided liability insurance to gun owners for acts of intentional wrongdoing,” the regulator said.
The fines were part of settlements between the companies and the regulator, outcomes that are the “culmination of years of political activism by Cuomo against the NRA and gun rights organizations,” an NRA lawyer said in a statement.
National debate has heated up over the issue of gun control, and the NRA’s role in opposing it, since Feb. 14, when a former student killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, using an AR-15 assault rifle he had purchased legally.
Cuomo, NYDFS and its superintendent, Maria Vullo, whom the NRA also named as a defendant, engaged in a “campaign of selective prosecution, backroom exhortations, and public threats” to coerce banks and insurance companies to withhold services from the NRA, the group said in the suit.
The suit also cites an April letter issued by NYDFS to heads of banks and insurance companies doing business in New York encouraging them to manage “reputational risk” posed by dealings with “gun promotion organizations.”
NYDFS has an obligation to “supervise and guide regulated entities to mitigate the risks to their safety and soundness that may derive from a variety of sources, including reputational risk,” said Vullo.
NYDFS must also enforce New York law, Vullo said. The Lockton and Chubb settlements addressed unlicensed and unlawful activity connected with “Carry Guard.”
The NRA has suffered tens of millions of dollars in damages, the group said.
Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Dan Grebler
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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