The F-Word (Funding) Still Hot Topic at Welfare Summit

The New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) hosted a two-hour summit on racehorse aftercare Aug. 30 in Saratoga Springs. The meeting was a scaled-down version of the commission's 2015 day-long symposium on the same subject, and while the NYSGC provided updates on several forward-thinking initiatives, a common concern from last year–how to fund retirement and welfare programs–remained a sticking point in the dialogue.

“Commission involvement in aftercare is a bit of a conundrum, in that our jurisdiction over a racehorse ends when it leaves training and is retired,” said NYSGC executive director Robert Williams. “While the commission has little ability to drive revenue to retirement programs, we do, however, have an ability to raise the profile on this important subject.”

And while Williams underscored that the issue of horse aftercare “is not one to be resolved by through government imposing moral requirements on the industry's participants,” he did outline three specific projects that the NYSGC has spearheaded to address racehorse aftercare from the regulatory level.

One initiative is that starting in 2017, a requirement for licensure for New York trainers and owners will be to attest that they have viewed an educational video that the NYSGC has produced on the subject of racehorse aftercare. A version of the video was previewed at the summit.

Williams said a separate plan calls for a new state rule that could be adopted as early as November that will require trainers to participate in continuing education “modules” on horse health that are currently being developed by NYSGC equine medical director Dr. Scott Palmer.

A third NYSGC project is a census that aims to track every New York-bred Thoroughbred that raced between 2010 and 2012 but is no longer known to be in active training.

The NYSGC identified 3,894 such inactive horses but could only ascertain the current whereabouts of 1,082 of them (590 broodmares, 314 deceased, 96 known retirees, 64 adopted, 14 “second careers,” three sold at auction, and one stallion). Williams said this illustrated the difficulty of keeping track of horses once their racing careers have concluded.

But the most interesting exchanges about Thoroughbred aftercare were raised during the open public commentary portion of the meeting.

“We really appreciate the gaming commission jumping into this, having this forum and being supportive, but at the same time the gaming commission is looking to take away resources from us in Albany to fund equine research and testing that will directly limit what we can give to aftercare,” said trainer Rick Violette, Jr., who also serves as president of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association (NYTHA).

“The end doesn't make sense,” Violette continued. “We're looking to expand the aftercare stuff that we're doing…I'm asking you to take your foot off our throats. Leave our budget alone, and we can get together as an industry…to find more funding that isn't going to cripple great initiatives like the aftercare.

“We are light years from where we were five years ago,” Violette summed up. “It has to keep improving. And that's why I'm asking don't take any money away, so we can expand our program.”

Peter Moschetti, Jr, a governor's appointee to the NYSGC, followed Violette's comments by saying “I don't know who's foot is on who's throat, to be honest with you, but I think the [aftercare] obligation needs to be spread out…It should be a group effort.”

Earlier in the forum, New York Racing Association (NYRA) chief executive officer and president Christopher Kay detailed how NYRA in 2016 began matching NYTHA's $5-per-starter donation to the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance Foundation. Kay said NYRA's donations so far total $41,250, and that he projects NYRA's contributions to total $80,000-$100,000 by year's end.

But Diana Pikulski, the director of external affairs for the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, later challenged the overall financial impact of NYRA's contributions.

“It's important that everybody who is involved in trying to find the new funds and develop the new funding systems is cognizant of the fact that we need new money,” Pikulski said. “NYRA is taking money out per start, and they're putting in [funding] mechanisms. But that's less money than NYRA used to give away to aftercare. So it's the same money that's being rearranged, but it's not more money.”

Pikulski suggested, and several other participants later elaborated on, the idea of creating a system that would be like an annuity fund for aftercare expenses that gets seeded with mandatory contributions when a Thoroughbred is first registered.

“The gaming commission, horse racing, is highly regulated. But the very creatures that are the essence of the game, they're not really regulated when they're not racing any more, and it's not fair,” Pikulski said.

Thomas J. Gallo III, president of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders, Inc., and the managing partner for Parting Glass Racing, said he tries to get the point across to new members in his ownership group that when you invest in horses, “the end of the line is not the last race. The end of the line is when that horse is properly placed.”

Anna Ford, the Thoroughbred Program Director for the New Vocations adoption program, said New York is a leader among the states that she deals with nationwide in terms of second-career welfare.

“New York is already leading the ship, I feel, in aftercare and how they're dealing with things,” Ford said. “So I want to just bring some positive light to this discussion and say that bringing the right type of people to the table is really, really good to make sure that we're not reinventing the wheel in different places and that we're utilizing the resources and systems that are already in place.”

Kirby Wycoff, an educator who specializes in human/animal interactions at Worcester State University and is active as a Thoroughbred owner with Three Diamonds Farm, was the final audience member to speak. She noted that several weeks ago, the very same venue–the Fasig-Tipton Humphrey S. Finney Sales Pavilion–“was a full house” for the annual Saratoga yearling auctions.

“And if you look around [today], there are a lot of empty seats,” Wycoff said. ” I think this is part of our problem. Why is it that all of us came here today? Because we care about this issue. But we need to bring more people to the table. I think there are a number of systems and organizations in place that work really well. But until we get a better handle on how those systems can communicate with one another, and how we can understand this need and systematically respond to it, we're going to continue to see empty seats, and I think that's part of where our focus needs to be.”