State of the Union
Originally Written: June 17, 2008
In case you haven’t heard, OTB was about to be closed but then wasn’t. The politics and mechanisms behind all this is kind of complicated, so I’m not really going to go into it. Instead, I’m posting a letter I wrote to newspaper editors that was (not surprisingly) never published. It was written a couple days before we knew our fate and I’ve left it unedited:
You’ve probably skipped or skimmed any recent articles about the New York City Off-Track Betting Corporation (NYC OTB), the horse-racing gambling institution with branches all over the city. I probably would’ve too if I hadn’t been working at OTB for over two years now. The company is set to close after Sunday, June 15, and its 1500 employees—myself included—will be out of a job. For you skippers and skimmers, here’s a quick rundown of the situation: people come to bet on horse races occurring throughout the day all over the world from one location—an OTB branch. Like any gambling institution, the company makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year. However, these profits are shared between the state and local governments as well as NYRA, the New York Racing Association. The formula in place takes the gross earnings for the year rather than our actual net profit, leaving the company with less and less every year until this year, where we finally are giving out more than we make, putting us in the red. Mayor Bloomberg, with good reason, refuses to bail us out with taxpayers’ money, and so next week you’ll have to drive to the track if you want to place a bet.
Here’s why we should stay open: OTB was created almost forty years ago to reduce the influence of illegal bookies and organized crime and it’s done a pretty decent job of that. As soon as we close, those bookies are going to return immediately. People aren’t going to stop gambling just because the government isn’t allowing it anymore. Keeping OTB open would prevent an uprise in broken thumbs and bullet-ridden kneecaps. And with the failing economy and rising food, electric, water and gas costs, the government should be doing all it can to prevent 1500 New Yorkers from losing their jobs. Even a small ripple effect can do a lot of damage these days.
Here’s how we fix this: First, just to keep us open, State legislators and Union leaders are pushing to restructure the formula: let the governments take percentages of our net profit, not our gross gains. In the long term, all Statewide OTBs should be consolidated into a single agency and merged with NYRA to increase efficiency. Finally, Lotto machines should be included in the branches to broaden our customer base and increase the productivity of the company.
It’s hard for people to sympathize with a gambling institution, especially since most people don’t know anybody who works at one. But, especially these days, when anyone loses their job when they don’t need to, efforts should be made to prevent it.
Jack Picone
jackpicone@gmail.com
The State did eventually take us over, but it’ll be a few months before we see any changes and what this means for the company. Everyone got to keep their jobs, which is very nice, and I’ll still be in daily contact with the homeless degenerates I love to write about so much. Unless the State decides to fire me. Please don’t fire me, State.
