Posts Tagged ‘Texas Racing Commission’

After Several More Blows From The Clue-by-4, Texas Racing Commission Decides Not To Commit Suicide

Sunday, February 21st, 2016

Some people learn quicker from experience than others. For example, a foolish child generally learns very quickly not to play with fire.

Then there’s the Texas Racing Commission, which would have disfiguring burns over three-quarters of its body before deciding Hey, maybe the bright red thing doesn’t want to be my friend!

But this week, commissioners finally seem to have gotten the message:

“The Texas Racing Commission voted Thursday to repeal its endorsement of historical racing terminals, the controversial machines that led to a fierce political fight with prominent state legislators. The 5-4 vote ends a more than year of fighting over who has the authority to authorize dog tracks to add new gaming machines.”

How eminently reasonable of the Commission to decide that, in fact, state law does indeed apply to them after all…

(Hat tip: Cahnman’s Musings.)

Texas Racing Commission Flips Off Legislature Yet Again

Thursday, December 17th, 2015

Time and time again the executive, legislative and judicial branches have told the Texas Racing Commission “You’re breaking the law and you have to repeal your approval of historical gambling” (i.e., thinly disguised slot machines). And time and time again the Texas Racing Commission has said “Up yours! We’re tools of the gambling lobby, and we’re not going to let little things like the law stand in our way!”

And this week they did it yet again:

Texas racing officials refused to retreat Tuesday from a plan to allow a hotly contested new way to gamble at horse racetracks statewide, prompting the commission’s new chairman to ask the staff for a plan to shut down the agency.

After two hours of testimony from those in the horse industry, the nine-member Texas Racing Commission voted 4-4 with one abstention to repeal rules that would allow historical racing, the replaying of already-run races on slot machinelike devices, at Texas tracks such as Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie.

The commissioners later unanimously agreed to republish the historical racing rules to gain more public input so they can take up the issue again in February.

Since the the motion to repeal the rules failed, new commission Chairman Rolando Pablos asked agency staffers to “prepare a plan for shutting down the agency,” anticipating a lack of funding from lawmakers that would require the agency to shut down.

What does it take to bring a rogue agency to heel?

Texas Racing Commission Handed Clue-By-4

Thursday, December 10th, 2015

Hey remember how the state legislature told they Texas Racing Commission that they didn’t have the authority to approve “historical racing” machines (i.e., gambling machines prohibited by law)? And remember how the Racing Commission said “Screw you, we’re doing it anyway because we’re total lapdogs for the gambling lobby?” (I may be paraphrasing just a wee tad here…)

Well a solution appears to be at hand:

There’s been another shakeup of top leadership at an embattled state agency as the push to derail historical racing — a hotly contested new way to gamble at tracks statewide — continues in Austin.

Gov. Greg Abbott has named Rolando Pablos of El Paso to lead the Texas Racing Commission, replacing local orthopedic surgeon Robert Schmidt, who has guided the agency since 2011.

Schmidt, who will continue to serve on the commission, resigned as chair after declining Abbott’s request to place the issue of repealing historical racing, the replaying of past races on slot machine-like devices, on next week’s agenda.

The governor accepted that resignation; a proposal to repeal historical racing rules is now on the commission’s Dec. 15 agenda.

You would think it wouldn’t be that hard to reign in a rogue commission that refuses to obey the law, but I guess gambling lobby money talks pretty loudly…

Let the Texas Racing Commission Die

Wednesday, August 26th, 2015

The Texas Racing Commission is tasked with overseeing and regulating horse and greyhound racing in Texas. In 2014, the commission decided to legalize “historical racing”.

What’s historical racing, you ask? That’s where bettors use a machine to wager on already-run races whose distinguishing characteristics have been stripped out. In other words, betting real money on imaginary digitized horses, the horses on which they have are theoretically based being, in most likelihood, long dead.

So what law passed by the legislature enabled them to legalize this entirely new form of gambling in Texas?

None. They just made it up after the gambling lobby asked them to. Race tracks say that without historical racing they’ll have to close up shop.

One tiny little problem: Not only has the legislature not approved historical racing machines, they say that the machines violate Texas laws against gambling machines. “‘These rules appear to be an attempt by the Racing Commission to circumvent the Legislature’s authority to decide what types of gambling are and are not legal,’ stated a letter sent at the time by [Texas Sen. Jane] Nelson, [Texas Sen. Craig] Estes and others in the Senate GOP Caucus. ‘This is not an appropriate decision for the Racing Commission.'”

Indeed, they stripped funding from the Texas Racing Commission until such time as they were willing to obey the law.

And the Legislative Budget Board is enforcing that decision.

So how did the Texas Racing Commission respond to being told to obey the law? “Screw you, we’re legalizing historical racing anyway.”

Personally, wearing my libertarian hat, I think more forms of gambling should be legal, regulated and taxed in Texas. However, at this point it’s become clear that the Texas Racing Commission has been captured by the very industry it was created to regulate. At this point it’s better for the LBB to let funding for the Texas Racing Commission lapse entirely. A short special session would be called creating a new agency to regulate horse racing and letting Governor Abbott choose commissioners who serve the interests of Texas citizens rather than the gambling lobby.

And if Texas race tracks close (either temporarily or permanently), that’s acceptable collateral damage for a marginal industry that captured its own regulatory agency and pushed it into promulgating illegal regulations not authorized by the legislature.

So focused has the Texas Racing Commission been on imposing historical racing, if I were Attorney General Ken Paxton, I’d take a serious look at investigating the possibility that current commissioners received payoffs from the gambling lobby to do so.

But you know who would probably profit the most from letting historical racing and slots machines appear at Texas race tracks? Texas speaker Joe Straus, who stands to rake in millions due to his and his family’s connections to gambling interests.

Edited to Add: Cahnman’s Musings notes that two of the commission members who voted for historical racing are holdovers that Gov. Abbott can replace at moment’s notice. Sounds like that should be the strategy going forward…

Texas vs. California Update for April 15, 2015

Wednesday, April 15th, 2015

Hope you’ve finished your taxes already! Time for another Texas vs. California update:

  • Detroit and Stockton’s bankruptcies may signal further problems nationwide, says New York Fed President William Dudley. “While these particular bankruptcy filings have captured a considerable amount of attention, and rightly so, they may foreshadow more widespread problems than what might be implied by current bond ratings.”
  • The Texas senate approves a $211.4 billion biannual budget, which will need to be reconciled with the $209.8 billion House budget. Both budgets offer tax relief, but of different kinds.
  • The senate also zero funds two rogue agencies the Texas Racing Commission and the Travis County Public Integrity Unit. Expect Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, with deep ties to the gambling industry, to go to the mat to save the Racing Commission.
  • The Texas senate has also passed signifcant spending limit reform in Senate Bill 9.
  • CalPERS raises contribution rates by 6%.
  • California senate OKs yet another restrictive energy policy bill. Yet another in their continuing “Let’s send as much business to Texas as possible” acts…
  • Los Angeles Unified School District extends lavish employee benefits package another three years, despite existing underfunded liabilities. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • California sets aside $261 million for cost overruns on its already pricey high speed rail boondoggle.
  • California’s drought is something environmentalist liberal elites have brought on themselves: “Those who did the most to cancel water projects and divert reservoir water to pursue their reactionary nineteenth-century dreams of a scenic, depopulated, and fish-friendly environment enjoy lifestyles predicated entirely on the fragile early twentieth-century water projects of the sort they now condemn.”
  • More on the same theme.
  • San Diego builds a desalinization plant (Hat tip: Moe Lane.)
  • Central California is already starting to suffer water-related thefts.
  • In the wake of the Vergara ruling, California Republicans want to overhaul how teachers are hired and fired. Naturally teacher’s unions are opposed…
  • Judge rules that California must pay for sex change operations for prisoners on Eight Amendment grounds. “To contend that ‘forcing’ a prisoner to continue as a man violates the Constitution is absurd…It is nonsensical to grant imprisoned convicted felons health-care ‘entitlements’ that many law-abiding, hardworking taxpayers don’t enjoy.”
  • California prostitutes demand prostitution be legalized. You’d think they’d get a sympathetic hearing from California’s Democrat-controlled legislation, what with all they have in common… (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Stanford student council candidate grilled over Colleging While Jewish. This could go in the regular LinkSwarm, but I noticed that both of these recent incidents took place in California.