Cuomo & Co’s next special-interest payoff
Friday, April 5, 2019
Sunday, April 21, 2019
| Track Code | Track Name | Entry | Scratch | 1st Post ET | 1st Post Local | Time Zone | Stakes Race(s) | Stakes Grade | T.V. Indicator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GG | GOLDEN GATE FIELDS | 48 | 24 | 3:45 PM | 12:45 PM | PDT | |||
| LS | LONE STAR PARK | 72 | 0 | 3:35 PM | 2:35 PM | CDT | |||
| SA | SANTA ANITA PARK | 72 | 24 | 3:30 PM | 12:30 PM | PDT | |||
| SUN | SUNLAND PARK | 168 | 0 | 2:30 PM | 12:30 PM | MDT | |||
| WO | WOODBINE | 72 | 48 |
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New York Gov. Andrew CuomoAP
Stop scratching on holidays
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.
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
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.
As if all the new taxes and fees passed last week as part of the state budget aren’t painful enough, lawmakers are poised to pass yet another tax soon, though this one will be hidden.
It’s an expansion of the “prevailing wage,” a government-set rate for construction jobs. It now applies only to government work (building schools etc.), but Gov. Cuomo is bent on expanding the rule to cover projects that get public subsidies.
The name is badly misleading, as Empire Center fiscal expert E.J. McMahon notes. It’s not really “prevailing”: The rate’s usually equivalent to union pay scales. And it impacts benefits as well as wages.
And, as McMahon and others have found, prevailing-wage laws add as much as 25 percent to the cost of a project, an extra charge passed on to the public via higher prices or rents (even if folks don’t realize it). That’s why it counts as a (hidden) tax.
Lawmakers pass such laws to suck up to labor — which loves them because they drive up pay and benefits and squash competitors that may otherwise outbid union contractors. In exchange, the pols get union donations and political backing. A win-win for everyone . . . except taxpayers.
Yet slapping projects that get public goodies (tax breaks or other subsidies) with new costs defeats the very point of those goodies: to encourage development. When city pols tried to force a “living wage” requirement on a plan to turn the Kingsbridge Armory in The Bronx into a mall, the builder simply walked away.
The Don’t Block NY Building Coalition rightly warns that the gov’s proposal would “undoubtedly” halt projects, “cost countless jobs and opportunities for New York families” and make it “even more difficult to do business in the Empire State.”
Yet Cuomo insists lawmakers OK it before the legislative session ends in June. The main hold-up is over whether to exempt builders whose subsidy is below a certain level. (Cuomo’s “compromise”: Let his Labor Department set the amount.)
Prosecutor defends dropping charges against Jussie Smollett
CHICAGO — The Chicago prosecutor whose office dismissed charged against Jussie Smollett defended the decision on Saturday, saying the “Empire” actor was treated no differently than thousands of other defendants whose charges were similarly dropped since she took office.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx made the comments during a defiant and emotional address at the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Rainbow Push Coalition. Foxx openly wondered if her race had something to do with the harsh criticism she’s faced since her office announced that charges against Smollett had been dropped. The actor was accused of staging what he claimed to be a racist and homophobic attack in January.
“I have been asking myself for the last two weeks what is this really about,” she said. “As someone who has lived in this city, who came up in the projects of this city to serve as the first African American woman in this role, it is disheartening to me … that when we get in these positions somehow the goalposts change.”
Foxx, who recused herself from the case after she communicating with a Smollett relative during the probe, reiterated that she welcomes of an independent investigation into the way she and her office handled the case. She also reminded the audience that her office did the same thing for the nearly 6,000 low-level defendants who had their charges dropped with “deferred prosecution” during her tenure.
Further, she said that under the law, Smollett could be fined a maximum of $10,000 and that the actor did pay that amount because his $10,000 bond was forfeited.
But Foxx did not address specifics of the case, or the criticism leveled by legal experts and others who said it was highly unusual not to require an admission of guilt by Smollett, particularly since at the time they dropped charges, prosecutors said they believed they could have proven the charges against the actor.
“In my 48 years of practice, I certainly have never seen a deferred prosecution done like that,” Richard Kling, an IIT-Kent Law School professor told the Chicago Sun-Times last week.
Foxx also responded to the calls by various critics to resign, saying that she will complete her term that ends next year and has plans to run for re-election.
Fact is, at any level this is just another hit on severely overtaxed New Yorkers, one that will directly cripple development and cost jobs, to boot.
Once again, the general public loses while special inte
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