Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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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.
Even more evidence of Cuomo pay-to-play corruption and Easter Sunday Enforcement
Fresh evidence keeps rolling in that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “economic development” programs amount to one vast pay-to-play scheme. The latest: an Albany Times-Union exposé on the exceptional state aid for Crystal Run, an upstate health care company.
The T-U obtained emails and records showing how the firm got loads of special help from Team Cuomo to expand its business . . . after company officials started kicking in big time to the governor.
Because Crystal Run’s $400,000 in donations to Cuomo may have involved the use of illegal straw donors, it’s now under criminal investigation by a federal grand jury.
According to the T-U, help from the gov’s office began flowing shortly after Crystal Run’s CEO made his first $25,000 donation to Cuomo. And the point man working to grease the skids of state bureaucracy was none other than Joe Percoco, then Cuomo’s deputy secretary and a guy the governor long called a “brother.”
The same Joe Percoco who just recently was convicted of pocketing more than $300,000 in bribes in the Buffalo Billion bid-rigging scandal benefiting two development firms — also both hefty Cuomo donors.
With Percoco’s help, Crystal Run was constantly on the receiving end of state help and financing — even for projects that had long ago broken ground without any state money.
In fact, the T-U reports, Cuomo’s Health Department awarded $547 million worth of financing to 63 projects through its Capital Restructuring and Financing Program. All recipients were nonprofits — except Crystal Run.
All this, even as The Post has shown how the $10 billion-plus spent on “Andy Land” economic development has failed to deliver anything like the jobs the gov promised.
Back in February, we suggested that the only thing on which Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio appear to see eye-to-eye is rewarding their donors. Also like de Blasio, who escaped criminal charges,
Cuomo has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Cuomo has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
But when multiple major Cuomo officials and donors are headed to prison for corruption, the governor is anything but an innocent bystander.
The Orthodox Church does not count For Andre Cuomo ny const s
The Orthodox Church does not count For Andre Cuomo ny const s
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