from Harness Tracks of America

Tucson, AZ — Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation says it will close down this coming Friday after the New York Senate walked out of a special session without considering governor David Paterson’s reorganization plan.

The Assembly is ready to pass the bill, or may have by the time you read this, but its action without Senate concurrence means nothing. Speaker Sheldon Silver says the bill will be signed and ready if the Senate returns, as he expects, later this month, so Friday’s closing date could be postponed or rescinded if it happens, although that would be an expensive procedure.

Silver says if the Senate does not return and pass the measure, “basically the place just closes.”

NYC OTB is out of money, according to its chairman Larry Schwartz and president and CEO Greg Rayburn. Both were in Albany yesterday, unsuccessfully trying to convince senators to pass the reorganization bill.

Gov. Paterson said he does not think the measure is a bailout plan.

“Everybody takes a haircut in this plan,” he said. “The tracks take it, the unions take it. Everybody has to reduce their consumption to make the plan work.”

Everybody didn’t agree, including the horsemen, whose leader vetoed it.

What would happen to OTB telephone betting, which would have gone to the tracks if the plan had passed, has not been made clear, but it is in danger too.