Franchise Delay Hangs Over Trainers

[parsixfarms]

I spoke to our trainer this morning, and he said that there are a lot of vans heading out of town - and those horsemen still in NY are very much concerned about the possibility of a shutdown, particularly when nothing is being said to them about what is going on. As a result, horsemen (not the Bomze/Finley-types with whom I agree with the comment that their self-serving conduct through this process was deplorable) have had to make contingency plans in case there is a shutdown - and they have already been forced to pay for it (in the forms of deposits for stalls elsewhere, etc.), whether or not there is a shutdown or not.

I heard Joe Bruno on a local Capital District radio interview yesterday morning, and he was asked about the franchise issue. He said that his people have been talking to Spitzer's, and that he hoped to have the legislature back in town to deal with the franchise issue in about two weeks. I don't have any inside information on this, but my gut sense from what I've read before and from what Bruno intimated in the interview is that the sticking point on this may be Shelly Silver's opposition to having slots at Belmont (Nassau County), which would effectively break up NYC's monopoly on the slots if they were only at Aqueduct. If there were slots at two places, more political pals can get cut in on the $$, which we all know this is what it is really about, and the endangered LI Republicans can say that they did something for their constituents (hoping that will help Bruno in his effort to hold onto his razor-slim Senate majority in the 2008 elections). I'm hoping that this is all it's about, and that Bruno's ridiculous idea of a state racing authority with the possibility of a split racing franchise, especially when there are not any qualified alternatives to NYRA, is just a smokescreen. Time will obviously tell.