Racing for the cash
There is nothing so compelling as a pot of public money just sitting around doing nothing.
And so it was inevitable that the more than $15.5 million accumulating in the state’s Horse Race Development Fund should attract proposals for putting it to use — for better or worse.
The fund was created by the 2011 casino gaming law and receives a portion of the gross receipts from the Plainridge Park Casino slot parlor. It was intended to sweeten racing purses and/ or pay benefits to horsemen — a way to level the playing field within the gaming industry. And, of course, it was intended to divvy up the pot of gaming revenues so many ways that the gaming legislation was assured of passage.
But horse racing in this state is a dying industry — the sale of Suffolk Downs its final death rattle. In fact, the fund is now used to sweeten purses in out of state
races where Massachusetts-bred horses run, according to a recent report on the fund by State House News Service. Really!
So now the New England Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association has come up with a plan for a “world class, year-round horse park,” Paul Umbrello, executive director of the NEHBPA told State House News. The park would host 75 days of thoroughbred racing, and include an indoor facility for Olympic-style equestrian events and a retirement facility for up to 40 horses.
Now, silly us for raising a question like this, but if Suffolk Downs couldn’t make a go of thoroughbred racing a stone’s throw from downtown Boston, why on earth would the state want to invest its money in such a venture, say in maybe a town like Spencer?
It was, after all, Sen. Anne Gobi (D-Spencer) who filed a bill to divert money from the fund to a horse race park, while acknowledging that the racing industry is “on life support.”
“This is an opportunity to support the entire industry,” she added. “We have to do something because it’s going and once it’s gone it’s not coming back.”
And calling horse racing an “industry” does not make it so.
“We just want to say we want to take X percentage of that fund to build and support, as a bridge gap, the horse park,” Umbrello said. “Once we’re up and running it’s going to be self-sufficient.”
Like we’ve never heard that one before!
Until lawmakers find a better use for the racing fund it will continue to attract nutty schemes like this one.
Rep. Brad Jones (R-North Reading) proposes to divert half of the racing fund money (up to $10 million a year) to the Community Preservation Trust Fund, which could be used by localities to preserve open space or parks (or if they choose to build affordable housing or renovate historic buildings). That’s at least a good start.