Legislative panel gets earful on state’s horse-racing future

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

GRAND ISLAND — Two horses grazing contentedly in knee-high grass formed a peaceful scene just east of Fonner Park on Thursday.

Things were much more unsettled across the street in the Bosselman Conference Center.

That’s where the Nebraska Legislature’s General Affairs Committee and perhaps as many as 200 people gathered to examine the future of the state’s struggling horse racing industry.

Many of those who testified at the second of three interim hearings strongly endorsed plans introduced at the first hearing in Lincoln last month that call for a $50 million investment in Goldenrod Downs, a mile-long track on the northeast outskirts of Lincoln near the Lancaster Event Center.

Opinion seemed more divided when the discussion turned to the idea of opening gambling casinos at Fonner Park and other Nebraska racetracks to boost revenue support for live racing.

Goldenrod Downs and the accompanying Nebraska Horse Park, featuring equestrian programs and equitherapy, form a proposed alternative to the existing, shorter track at State Fair Park.

An alternative is being advanced because the fairgrounds are scheduled to be converted to a research campus anchored by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln when the fair leaves for Grand Island in 2010.

“If Lincoln doesn’t keep going,” said 26-year-old racing enthusiast Jesse Compton of Shelby, “there’s a pretty good chance horse racing will collapse.”

State Sen. Vickie McDonald of St. Paul urged a round of hearings on the future of horse-racing during the last legislative session.

McDonald acted after a group of community leaders from Lincoln, organized as 2015 Vision, failed to persuade the Legislature in April to move both the fair and horse racing to the same area of 84th Street and Havelock Avenue adjacent to the Lancaster Event Center.

It remains to be seen what, if any, legislation might follow the third and final hearing in Omaha next week. But McDonald, stepping down this year because of term limits, remains committed to the interim inquiry.

“We’ve been hearing in recent years that horse racing is in trouble,” she said Thursday at the start of the 2½-hour hearing. “We’ve been hearing that it’s a dying industry that can’t compete with other forms of gaming in Nebraska.”

Now there’s even more uncertainty because of what’s happening in Lincoln, she said. “Obviously, losing horse racing at State Fair Park will have a significant impact on Nebraska as a whole.”

Jerry Fudge of Ashland, president of the Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association (HBPA), was in the audience but did not testify Thursday. Approached afterward, he said the willingness of the association’s 1,100 members to invest as much as $18 million in Goldenrod Downs assumes nothing about the future of casino gambling.

“We’re really not taking a stand on that yet” in relation to the 2009 legislative session, he said.

Apart from that, “I pretty much agreed with everything everybody said. Our industry is struggling and we need to come up with some ways to make it better.”

If the new track in Lincoln gets on the Legislature’s agenda, Fudge foresees no difficulty keeping it separated, in the public’s mind, from any new consideration of casinos.

Two other General Affairs Committee members, Sen. Russ Karpisek of Wilber and Sen. Annette Dubas of Fullerton, said they aren’t eager to return to the casino controversy in January.

“The people of Nebraska have spoken very, very loudly and many times” on that subject, Dubas said.

Karpisek noted that many of the people testifying Thursday saw a longer track in Lincoln, source of almost 22 percent of the revenue from the state’s five horse-racing venues in 2007, as an answer in itself.

Supporters project the proposed Goldenrod Downs as a magnet for better horses and bigger racing purses, and as a bright prospect for simulcast races.

“That has kind of taken the emphasis off expanded gambling,” Karpisek said. “I think it’s good for the association to kind of stand on its own.”

Nonetheless, Thursday testimony also included repeated references to a casino-racetrack connection.

“If you look at it,” said June O’Neill, “every state around us has casino gambling and a portion of that goes to horse racing.”

Oklahoma is among the most recent and flourishing additions to that list, said O’Neill, an owner of race horses in the Grand Island area and a member of the board of directors of the HBPA.

“We need to be realistic,” she said. “Those dollars are marching out of the state.”

But Gene Dominick and Wes Holen offered another view of gambling.

Increased gambling means increased crime, said Dominick, educational coordinator at Heartland Re-entry After Care, a ministry devoted to helping former prison inmates become productive citizens.

Oxford clergyman Holen also spoke out against expanding gambling in a state where voters have repeatedly said no on related ballot measures.

“The price of gambling is not fully paid when a person leaves the casino,” he said.

Nobody knows how much give and take about gambling will be included in the final hearing next week in Omaha.

Definitely on the hearing agenda is an economic profile of horse racing to be offered by Eric Thompson, director of the Bureau of Business Research based on the UNL campus.

Horse-racing advocate Rita Hemmer of Grand Island got in the final word on the gambling subject from the ranks of witnesses Thursday.

“I don’t know anybody here who wants to see somebody destroy their life because of gambling,” Hemmer said. However, “we don’t want to see our lives destroyed either.”

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.