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Would Georgia equus caballus racing put land on rail for riches or road to ruin?

Country Senate legislation proposes to allow voters make up one's mind

MARION COUNTY, Fla. – The Sunday choir sings a familiar refrain nearly horse racing and pari-mutuel betting and the evil information technology volition bring to Georgia.

Gambling and betting on racing will bring more than pathological gambling addiction and threaten families.

The opponents of horse racing and pari-mutuel betting, which include the Georgia Baptist Convention and its 1.3 meg members, sing the loudest that race tracks in Georgia will eventually give style to slot machines and gaming tables inside the race track, and addiction and broken families volition follow.

Dean Reeves and his wife Patti, who are agile members of Gwinnett Church in Sugar Hill, reject the caricature of racing as merely something else injecting turmoil into society.

Reeves, who is the president of the Georgia Horse Racing Coalition, looked out over his farm's race track here last Saturday morn at ii colts racing head-to-head in a workout, and clearly has a different view from his pew.

For miles and miles around Reeves'150-acre spread, the equine industry seems a worthwhile obsession. Barns and paddocks and black-painted horizontal fencing are over every rising in the route. Moss hangs from trees, and horses graze, or romp, or train on the idyllic, picturesque farms.

"We have to weigh the benefits confronting any potential drawbacks," said Reeves, who lives in Suwanee and owns Mucho Macho Man, a celebrated thoroughbred. "The fact that we would take horse racing in Georgia creates an industry and that industry itself creates a tremendous corporeality of jobs and these are blue collar jobs that are e'er needed. And to me, that'due south something that reaches the unabridged state; it'due south not only a benefit for metropolis of Atlanta."

Last week, a ramble amendment asking Georgia voters to legalize pari-mutuel betting on equus caballus racing cleared the Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee. An "enabling" bill, SB 212, accompanied the constitutional subpoena and calls for the construction of up to five horse racing tracks in Georgia.

Sen. Jeff Mullis. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder

Both are sponsored by the powerful chair of the gatekeeping Senate Rules Commission, Chickamauga Republican Jeff Mullis.

Reeves said he expects a floor vote soon on the subpoena and SB 212, the "Harry Geisinger Rural Georgia Jobs and Growth Act" named after a late pro-racing legislator. The bill does not include a provision for slot machines or table gaming at the tracks when they are built.

Huge Florida economic impact

The bear on of the equine manufacture on Florida is immense and for years SB 212 supporters say Georgia tin can benefit the same way economically. Thoroughbred sales in Florida annually are nearly $156 million, co-ordinate to a 2017 written report by Florida Thoroughbred Breeders' and Owners' Association. There are 100,000 thoroughbreds in the state and the straight thoroughbred manufacture impact is $1.five billion, according to the merchandise group. The industry says there are 23,000 jobs in the state related to thoroughbred racing.

The jobs include hot walkers, grooms, jockeys, fence installers, barn painters, veterinarians, blacksmiths, leather smiths, feed and hay dealers, tack repair, horse ship trucks, maintenance workers, and the list goes on.

"Don't forget the taco lady selling out of the truck to the workers at the barns," said Ty Springer, the general manager of the Ocala Breeders' Sales Company and its feed and supply sectionalization. "It's a long listing of jobs associated with this manufacture."

Indeed, this surface area of n central Florida is teeming with working equus caballus farms, but it is not simply thoroughbreds inside stalls and paddocks that demand homo assist. Sport horses used for show jumping and a diversity of other breeds are raised here and that has fueled a whole other industry.

The I-75 corridor, Springer said, is a spine running north through lands filled with limestone and calcium-rich minerals that has attracted horse breeders of all types here since the mid-1950s. The grass produced past that soil, and its bone-building qualities, are why $xvi million of horses will be sold this calendar month at the Ocala Breeders' Sale.

Can Georgia build off that base and duplicate what Florida has done? Backers of SB 212 say the state'due south moderate climate is ideal, the pastureland is available, and the land has a prominent agronomics industry to partner with.

A Georgia Southern Academy report found that edifice three tracks effectually the state will generate an economic impact of $1.28 billion and bring more than viii,500 new jobs.

The University of Georgia Cooperative Extension office, which studies agriculture in the state, among other industries, said at that place are 74,000 horses in the state and the breeding and intendance of the horses has an economical touch of $750 million each yr.

Even if these figures are somewhat inflated, as these pro-industry economical impact studies tin be, that is a lot of coin.

Big dreams for Georgia horse business

Reeves said there would exist ii short "meets", 1 in the spring and one in the fall and they usually last xx to thirty days. Corporate sponsorships for large stakes races could create incentives for horse owners coming in from out-of-state to compete for big purses, he said. Certainly, there are big corporations in Atlanta—Coca-Cola, UPS, Home Depot, among others—that might buy in to the idea of horse racing.

"A track would requite a unique opportunity for corporations to have outings for customers and employees," Reeves said. "What could be better than bringing a group to the Coca-Cola Classic, which might be a million-dollar race, and the advertising they would go from it."

Reeves said the vision is for a $350 million facility that is more than than a race rails. It is going to be hotels, restaurants, and special events, fifty-fifty steeplechase. If anything, the Georgia horse industry and the backers of SB 212 are not dreaming big enough when it comes to horses, he says.

Ten miles west of downtown Ocala is "WEC", the World Equestrian Center, a colossus of a venue for sport horses (jumping, dressage). The 378-acre circuitous is the largest equestrian center in the U.S. There are v indoor arenas, a stadium, an outdoor arena, and 23 barns.

There is besides an upscale hotel, where rooms are filled during meets at $350 to $450 per night. The facility also features two Expo centers and numerous shops. Springer of OBS said wealthy people from the Middle Due east fly in routinely.

It all seems grand, except to equus caballus racing and pari-mutuel opponents who insist gambling addictions will follow.

The supporters of pari-mutuel betting are mystified by the opposition because they experience the result of whether or non to allow gambling in Georgia was settled in 1992 when the land'due south popular lottery was approved to help fund pedagogy.

"You have to inquire yourself what is at that place nigh pari-mutuel betting that really is different than the lottery," Reeves said. "People are pouring money into the lottery, which goes to education, and people seem to be OK with that."

Betting on the machines

It used to be that large crowds at race tracks and the fans betting at windows, too as sponsor dollars, could fund the million-dollar purses to concenter the owners of the summit thoroughbreds in the state. But as racing popularity has fallen off the last 20 years, the machine wagering throughout the grandstand area has helped boost the purses at race tracks around the country.

The term "Racino" is used to talk nearly the hybrid business concern of horse racing and casino-style betting parlors.

1 of those casino games is Historical Horse Racing (HHR), an electronic gambling auto used at race tracks in eight states. HHR allows players to bet on 60,000 races that take already run in the U.Southward. The horse names and jockeys and runway are non shown in the video playback, only players become a skill sail to aid them "handicap" the races and make bets. Opponents of the machines claim they are simply another version of the slot auto.

"It's not the same every bit the slot machines at a casino," Reeves said of historical racing. "It'southward more than of a game.

"And if y'all go into a track and take your chances on a historical horse racing game, and so I don't meet where that's a larger consequence than it would be if somebody's doing a scratch off at the local seven-Xi."

There has been a biting fight the last two years in Kentucky between the Kentucky Thoroughbred Association and the Family Foundation over HHR terminals. In the last nine years, the thoroughbred industry has received $717 million from HHR, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Opponents were worried about the spread of gambling in the state because the gaming was so lucrative, so the Family unit Foundation sued saying Historical Equus caballus Racing terminals are not the aforementioned every bit pari-mutuel betting, which was allowed past the state.

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Family Foundation, so the legislature went back and re-wrote the law allowing HHR terminals alongside pari-mutuel betting.

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Pennsylvania legalized gambling in 2004, which first included just slot machines. The country so created the Race Horse Development Fund to help fund purses for major races, race rail marketing, and drug testing of horses. The revenue from slots flowed toward the horse racing industry.

In 2010, the state expanded from slots to table games. The money poured in and the Race Horse Development Fund was soon getting $240 meg a yr from gambling. Critics charged statewide gambling was propping upward a sagging industry that does non have enough race track fans and pari-mutuel bettors to support itself.

Education Voters of Pennsylvania, a lobbying grouping, studied horse racing in the state and found $3 billion of subsidies accept flowed to the equine industry since 2004, which was coin from legalized gambling at tracks and other venues around the state. The group says half of the purse coin goes to wealthy horse owners who alive out of state, and non plenty goes to fund state education initiatives.

Slot machines non on the table

Reeves said the proponents of SB 212 are not asking for slot machines, or gaming tables, at their tracks to aid the horse racing manufacture. He also said the threat of "Racino" is overblown.

"It's not been the big issue that people think information technology is," he said. "It has worked well in Kentucky and it'due south not that it has spread like a wildfire and gone through the entire country and there are historical racing machines all over the state."

They might non exist all over the land, but HHRs are expanding. The iconic thoroughbred race runway Churchill Downs said information technology will open a 43,000-foursquare-foot historical racing machine entertainment venue in downtown Louisville. It will characteristic 500 historical horse racing machines, along with an open up-air gaming area.

It is exactly what opponents of Georgia's SB 212 fear, a glace gradient to widespread gambling in the land.

Simply will pari-mutuel betting and gaming tables really keen the numbers of pathological gamblers?

In 2011, Howard Shaffer, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said in an article in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology that an "excessive gambling disease" does non infect anybody who enters a casino.

"The current bachelor evidence," the study found, "suggests that the rate of PG (pathological gambling) has remained relatively stable during the past 35 years despite an unprecedented increase in opportunities and access to gambling."

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Shaffer said, "Of people in the U.S. with gambling bug, nigh 75 percent had a mental health trouble first and a gambling trouble second."

That is not likely to calm the fears of the Sunday choir who meet misery galloping toward them.

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