HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICA Executive Newsletter

HARNESS TRACKS OF AMERICAExecutive NewsletterA daily fax and e-mail report on racing and gaming developments in North America and beyondStanley F. Bergstein, EditorMonday, April 5, 2010MUDDY WATERS GET MUDDIERNew complications in New York state could createeven further delay in the nine-year-old circusof trying to select a winner of the Aqueductracino project. The state inspector general,Joseph Fisch, who is investigating the wholeprocess, says the “three-men-in-a-room” formulawhich made the now disgraced selectionraises “constitutional concerns about the constitutionalityof the entire scheme for selectinga VLT operator.” Fisch says the New Yorkconstitution expressly prohibits gambling unlessauthorized and prescribed by the legislature,and he says that means legally a majorityvote of both houses. Under an unprecedented“memorandum of understanding,” that processwas bypassed and did not require any subsequentvote by the entire legislature. Even then,Fisch says, there are legal issues. The memorandumof understanding, he says, names only oneSenate representative to help decide the matter,and that is temporary Senate President MalcolmSmith, himself under investigation. But publicdocuments show that the Senate side decisionwas made not by Smith but by Democratic conferenceleader John Sampson. That’s hard tosee, says the New York Post, “how the designationof any bidder -- not just the terminally taintedAEG -- could withstand a court challenge.” Ifthat were to materialize, the whole process mightreturn to square one.PRIVATIZE ILLINOIS LOTTERY?Ongoing discussions on privatizing a portion ofthe highly successful Illinois state lottery havereached a new stage. A New York consulting firm,Oliver Wyman, has been hired for $3.95 millionto assist the state in writing the bidding documents.Illinois, concerned about New York andother mishandled situations, is insisting ontransparency and openness in choosing aprivate managing company that wouldbe paid a percentage of increased profits.TIGHTER CHAIN OF CUSTODYA new chemical test developed in Pennsylvaniaand reported by bloodhorse.com from ForensicScience International: Genetics, the scientificjournal that published the report in its April issue,is likely to tighten the oft-disputed chain ofcustody in movement of blood and urine samples.The new test, the report says, “has highpower of discrimination and reproducibilitywith high accuracy and precision, and is the firstin the horseracing industry specifically designedfor racehorse identification and detection ofequine sample contamination by human DNA.”The test, called 24-plex STR for short tandemrepeats, utilizes pieces of genetic material whichare amplified and analyzed to confirm or excludea single blood or urine sample being from thehost horse tested. It was developed after workwith 171 trotters and pacers and 90 thoroughbreds,with the chance of extremely few falseidentifications.UNIQUE AUSSIE COOPERATIONIn a welcome step forward in regulative cooperation,two separate Australian state racing jurisdictions-- Harness Racing South Australia andHarness Racing Victoria -- have joined forces onintegrity issues. Stewards and vets from SouthAustralia joined with their counterparts fromVictoria to gather almost 80 blood and urinesamples from horses in to race before a $50,000feature. Officials of the two state agencies calledthe experiment “only the first of many collaborationsin the future.”KEENELAND’S 50-CENT PICK 3Keeneland’s high level thoroughbred meetingin Lexington, KY, just getting underway, is experimentingwith a 50-cent Pick 3. The trackalready offers 50-cent Pick 4 and trifecta bets,and a 10-cent superfecta. The experimentis worth watching.