Senator Bill Larkin (R-C, Cornwall-on-Hudson) today announced the State Senate has passed legislation he sponsored (S.349) to dedicate a portion of the funding a race track takes in from video lottery gaming so that it can provide proper paddock and barn areas for the race horses and their trainers.
The bill also states that race tracks, in the designing and drafting of their physical layouts, plan for easy access between the race track area and the video gaming facilities.
"This is a smart way to use the revenue that video gaming is generating at the tracks," said Senator Larkin. "These are beautiful animals that should be treated with the utmost care and housed in safe and humane facilities. Also, we should better integrate the live races with the video lottery games and make it easy for people to go back and forth between the two. This, in turn, will generate added revenue that we can use for education programs and local governments, which was the original intent of bringing video lottery gaming to New York State."
Until recently, due to the financial distress of many horse racing facilities, it was difficult to finance the improvements that were needed to upgrade horse barns, stalls and paddock facilities. The Larkin plan will ameliorate this problem.
The bill was sent to the Assembly.