On February 9, 2016, a number of horsemen had driven hundreds of miles to Tallahassee to spend three minutes apiece addressing the Florida House of Representatives’ Regulatory Affairs Committee as it considered bills that would enable the Florida Legislature to ratify the Seminole Compact and decouple Florida horse racing.
But many never even got the chance. In fact, the only reference to these citizens, came as a condescending speech from one elected official, who admitted he didn’t know much about the horse farming business, but then he apparently thought he knew enough about it to give them advice: “You’ll have to find a new business.”
In her “I Beg To Differ” column today, Sunshine State News Publisher Nancy Smith asked whether any legislator ever even requested a state audit of the horse racing industry? Or whether there is a single elected official who understands what’s happening in our Florida Legislature right now?
Florida horsemen are screwed, Smith wrote, noting that not a single savior emerged from the Committee, the members of which offered only a handful of objections to the bills at hand. In fact, not even one of the three lawmakers voting against the pari-mutuels bill (PCB RAC 16-02) did so because they want to preserve horse racing — an economic engine that breathes life into hundreds of thousands of rural Florida families.
Read her entire article HERE.
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