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Bruno, Spitzer At Odds Over Racing Franchise

ALBANY (AP) ― A widely respected expert on New York racing gave limited support to Gov. Eliot Spitzer's choice of the New York Racing Association to keep the state's lucrative thoroughbred racing franchise.

But Bennett Liebman—a law professor long involved with racing in the state—also told a legislative committee Wednesday that the selection process was sloppy, reflecting some of the same concerns raised by a franchise contender that said NYRA was given an unfair edge in an "integrity" review supervised by the state Inspector General's Office.

Liebman's comments came as top lawmakers signaled their unhappiness with Spitzer's plan.

William Larkin, an Orange County Republican who chairs the state Senate racing and gaming committee, suggested that the Democratic governor's tentative agreement with NYRA to run the Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga race tracks could be returned to Spitzer for revision.

"I think this is big enough to include a lot of others than just NYRA," Republican Senate leader Joseph Bruno said at an event in his district. "What the governor submitted is not going to be the final product."

Bruno promised more public meetings to dissect Spitzer's proposal. He noted that if the Legislature doesn't choose a franchise by Dec. 31, a state racing board will take over track operations. That board was appointed during the administration of Republican Gov. George Pataki.

NYRA has held the franchise since 1955. "Last week the governor presented a detailed recommendation," said Spitzer spokesman Jeffrey Gordon. "It is now up to the Senate majority to either accept the governor's plan or, if he disagrees, to present a specific alternative."

The Assembly's Democratic majority supports Spitzer. At the Senate's racing meeting, Liebman gave NYRA a limited endorsement.

"The choice of NYRA to run racing is a reasonable recommendation," said Liebman, coordinator of the Racing and Wagering Law Program at Albany Law School and a former official in Republican and Democratic administrations.

"There are no white knights among its competitors." he added "I'm going to say it's not a bad idea to use NYRA."

He also warned Spitzer's tentative agreement with NYRA doesn't have enough safeguards to oversee NYRA, which has been dogged for years by investigations of its prior management.

"If you believe NYRA is transparent, you have blinders on," Liebman said, referring to the eye pieces worn by race horses to limit their peripheral vision.

Liebman joined several Republican senators in criticizing state Inspector General Kristine Hamann's handling of her role in the process that led to Spitzer's recommendation of NYRA last week. The inspector general's office, part of the Spitzer administration, assigned different private firms to investigate the "integrity" of NYRA and its three competitors—Empire Racing, Excelsior Racing Associates, and Capital Play.

"I read the report and I start seriously wondering if government can get anything right," Liebman said. "This is just badly done."

He said the integrity reviews failed to treat each competitor uniformly and was superficial in some background data that he called "gossipy."

He didn't, however, agree with some lobbyists, lawmakers and other "conspiracy theorists" that the process was steered to support NYRA in order to avoid a lengthy lawsuit over NYRA's claim that it owns the tracks.

"It's almost always because of inexperience and indolence," Liebman said. He agreed, however, that the land claim is best settled outside court.

"You could lose everything," Liebman told senators. "It would be much better to have had some declamatory judgment made ages ago."

Spitzer stands by his choice. "It was made for all the right reasons," he said at an event at Fayetteville-Manlius High School. "When I said the new NYRA should be the entity that continues to run thoroughbred racing in the state of New York, this was done after an exhaustive analysis done by many, many individuals with many metrics, integrity being one of them."

The consultants had to complete their work in less than two months, a deadline pressured by the need to award a franchise, said Michael Boxer of the inspector general's office. The reports weren't intended to rank competitors, but simply make sure they each met the integrity threshold, he said.

The criticism comes as Empire Racing said the state's review of its proposal was filled with errors and compromised by a conflict of interest that benefited NYRA.

Empire's Jeffrey Perlee said one of the investigators that probed Empire had previously worked for Getnick & Getnick, the law firm that monitored NYRA under a federal order in 2004 and 2005 and now works for NYRA.

Thacher President Thomas D. Thacher II said Wednesday that the employee was hired more than a year before the company received the assignment and there is no conflict because Getnick & Getnick was responsible to a federal court, not NYRA.

"The public was well served and better served by having someone who had investigated, but there was no connection with Getnick & Getnick," Thacher said.
Spitzer called Empire's claim specious. "The integrity reports did not bear on the final report because all of the various bidders satisfied that threshold," Spitzer said. "We made the decision based upon the business determinations."

The Spitzer administration on Wednesday also started to seek proposals for operation of video slot machines at Aqueduct race track.

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