Following an eight-month hiatus, the newly appointed Buffalos representative on the board of directors of Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. attended her first meeting on Thursday and promptly took up a significant project: modifying state legislation to facilitate horse race betting for Buffalo residents.
Former deputy mayor of Buffalo and Western New York Crystal Rodriguez-Dabney stated that she would like to allow pubs, restaurants and bowling alleys in Buffalo and Western New York to install OTB-supplied betting terminals in order to increase their revenue. The E-Z Bet terminals enable wagerers to place bets on any horse race that Western OTB is simulcasting. After then, OTB and the company divided the earnings.
However, it won’t be simple to get those terminals into Buffalo eateries and pubs. Hamburg Gaming, which is owned by the Buffalo Trotting Association Inc. of the Erie County Agricultural Society and is run by Delaware North, is now able to veto the location of E-Z Bet terminals within a 30-mile radius of its racecourse due to state legislation. This implies that OTB needs Hamburg Gaming’s approval before putting the terminals in Erie County or the majority of Niagara County.
The Democratic member Rodriguez-Dabney was appointed to the OTB board last summer, but the state Gaming Commission has only just granted her gaming licence. Since it is against the law for party officers to hold gambling licences, she was forced to resign from her leadership role in the Erie County Democratic Committee, which contributed to the delay. With 10 of the 99 votes on the board, she is a part of the Democratic takeover of the traditionally Republican-dominated board, which was made possible by last year’s reform legislation. OTB is the owner and operator of multiple branch sites in Western New York in addition to the racecourse and casino Batavia Downs.
This legislative session, OTB executives stated, they intend to ask its lobbyists in Albany to focus on the E-Z Bet issue. According to a spokeswoman, Assembly Member Jonathan Rivera, whose district includes portions of Buffalo and Hamburg Gaming, has shown interest in the matter.
Leave a Reply