By T. D. Thornton
The California Horse Racing Board (CHRB) unanimously approved six-month licenses for six advance-deposit wagering companies at its Jan. 26 monthly meeting. But three other agenda items that required potential votes on veterinary, safety, horse eligibility, split-sample drug testing, and out-of-competition testing issues had to be moved to February's agenda because of a technicality that violated California's public meeting rules.
Executive Director Rick Baedeker announced at the start of Thursday's meeting that because of a “clerical error,” the electronic delivery and online posting of Thursday's CHRB meeting occurred only nine days before the meeting, not 10 days ahead as required by state law. Thus, “as a precaution,” only those agenda items requiring “immediate action” were voted on by the board.
Yet, given the truncated agenda, the meeting did not exactly unfold swiftly, clocking in at 3 hours 15 minutes.
The early-meeting public comment period set a particularly off-topic tone when two owners of Arabian horses spent the better part of 20 minutes asking broad questions about how the CHRB maintains its mail and email database, how constituents are notified of meetings, and why more monthly meetings aren't scheduled in the northern part of the state, away from the bulk of industry participants. Eventually, one of the commenters finally got around to voicing a racing-related complaint about why more Arabian races aren't scheduled at Golden Gate Fields.
Later, a presentation by Plusmic Corporation USA that was designed to shed some light on how the photo-finish technology works at the state's tracks got snarled before it even started when the company's slide presentation wouldn't work, forcing the meeting into an unscheduled recess.
When the meeting resumed after the technological glitch, CHRB chairman Chuck Winner presidentially deadpanned that “We can pretend like the last presentation never happened–it's an 'alternate fact'.”
The CHRB did make some headway in trying to broker a resolution over the recent change in policy at the Calracing.com website, where earlier this month, free live and replay race streaming was unexpectedly switched over to a subscription service.
“Somebody made not a very well-publicized, or acknowledged…change to the way that that service is delivered,” said commissioner Madeline Auerbach, who explained how frustrated she was to learn about this unpopular change only when she attempted to access the site in early January to watch one of her own horses run and couldn't view the race.
After articulating both personal concerns and voicing numerous complaints that board members said came from a wide variety of people who use the service, it was agreed that the entities that administer the site would attempt to work with the board to present a better solution in time for February's CHRB meeting.
In other business, a new CHRB commissioner appointed by the governor in December, Araceli Ruano, was introduced. An attorney who served as vice president at Sotheby's West Coast Trusts and Estates Department from 2014 to 2016 and a former senior policy advisor for the Gore Presidential Campaign Committee in 2000, Ruano replaces Commissioner Richard Rosenberg, whose term expired last summer.
Yet the CHRB will still be operating one short of the required seven voting members until another new member is appointed, because Winner announced that commissioner Steve Beneto has recently resigned from the board to focus on other business commitments
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