New York City’s OTBs Face Closure Deadline
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- June
- 11
State leaders today said they may seek a state takeover of the beleaguered New York City OTB before it faces a shut down Sunday and leaves about 1,500 people without jobs and cripples the state’s racing industry.
“Because of the urgency of the situation, there’s no option I won’t explore right now,” Gov. David Paterson told reporters.
New York City OTB remains in a tenuous position as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is washing his hands of OTB, which he has called a “bookie operation” and should not receive city aid without significant changes.
Yet state officials, fearing the loss of jobs and revenue from the OTB parlors, said the state Racing and Wagering Board or the New York Racing Association should at least take over the OTB’s operations until a permanent solution is found.
“This is a timeliness issue, and it’s unfair to the hundreds and hundreds of people who work there,” said Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who has proposed a long-term solution of having the state oversee all the OTB regional operations in New York.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
