AAN Says Strange Things in Defense of Dying Horseracing Industry

Behind its paywall, my local paper oddly opines that there are correct and incorrect attitudes about the demise of horseracing in South Dakota:

Fort Pierre announced a few weeks ago that it would not host races this year. Aberdeen followed suit in recent days.

Some have voiced an “it’s about time” attitude. They might prefer the stock car races start earlier in Aberdeen or be leery of the industry and how horses are treated.

That’s the wrong attitude. But there is a larger question. And that’s whether horse racing can make a go of it — financially — nowadays in South Dakota.

The answer appears to be no [editorial board, “Horse Racing Can’t Depend on Pierre for Help,” Aberdeen American News, 2019.04.13].

My local paper does not explain why it’s the wrong attitude to say that when an enterprise can’t survive even with a subsidy from taxpayers, it’s about time that enterprise end.

My local paper does not explain why it’s the wrong attitude to look forward to more and earlier stock car racing. I don’t go to any of the races (listening to the roar of the engines a mile away from my bedroom window is thrill enough), but if fast cars can draw profitable crowds and fast horses can’t—and the AAN editors affirm the merits of measuring success by profit in the next sentence—then what’s wrong with saying, Let’s race cars instead of horses?

My local paper does not explain why it’s the wrong attitude to “be leery of the industry and how horses are treated.” Everyone, including jockeys, is properly concerned about how horses are treated. Everyone wants horses to be treated humanely. Everyone wants to prevent horses from dying for our sport. Treating horses properly requires money. If race organizers are struggling to make money, we should be concerned about whether they will be able to properly groom the tracks, check the horses, and provide whatever other services are necessary to ensure every horse and and every rider enjoys the safest ride possible.

Leaving that “wrong attitude” statement unexplained, my local editors race ahead to endorse a position floated last month here in the comment section, that the Legislature somehow stole money from the horseracing industry:

In 2001, the state Legislature transferred $2.25 million from two special horse racing accounts to the general appropriations bill. The money went to the state fair, to fund shelters and for other purposes. Then-Gov. Bill Janklow led that charge.

That money came, for the most part, from a 4.5-percent tax on simulcast betting on out-of-state races.

Opponents of the transfer said it would jeopardize the future of horse racing in South Dakota. They were right.

The move so many years ago might have been for the greater good, but that doesn’t mean it was fair. Even if it was eventually upheld in a 3-2 decision by the South Dakota Supreme Court.

A few years before the Legislature’s move in 2001, the state’s horse racing industry generously allowed Janklow to take $250,000 out of its funds to help domestic abuse shelters. That practice continued annually until the state’s fingers got even stickier. And it’s been tough times for horse racing ever since.

Now, nearly two decades later, it’s time to acknowledge that that money’s not coming back. The Legislature has repeatedly shown a lack of appetite to find the money to make things right with the horse racing industry [AAN editorial, 2019.04.13].

Observe the key phrases there: doesn’t mean it was fair… state’s fingers got even stickier… make things right… all of these phrases imply, as did my commenter more directly on March 13, that we wronged the horseracers and stole their money. but the money was never theirs. It was ours, tax money, properly collected and properly appropriated by the Legislature. The Supreme Court case in question, Apa v. Butler 2001, never questioned whether that money belonged to the public or to the horseracing industry; our Supreme Court made clear that the Legislature may legally and fairly spend money in the public coffers however it sees fit. The only question at stake in Apa v. Butler 2001 was whether the general appropriations bill illegally amended the racing fund statute, and that question, wonkily fascinating as it may be, weighs not one horsefeather on the scale for those claiming that the state “stole” money from the declining horseracing industry.

The editors wade through all this unnecessary horsehockey to come to the same conclusion most of us have—horseracing needs to stand on its own four hooves:

But the horse racing industry probably can’t depend on Pierre. Rightly or wrongly, it’s probably going to have to find a way to be self-sufficient. And if it can’t, it will likely fade into history like the accomplishments of Earl Sande [AAN editorial, 2019.04.13].

This conclusion epitomizes the wimpy editorial voice. Each sentence has an unnecessary conditional, probably or likely, modifying conclusions that are morally, practically, and historically certain. With the ambivalent rightly or wrongly, the editors simultaneously shrug away their firm assertion of theft and unfairness and casually toss out the morally inexplicable claim that a private club, charging money for private entertainment, ought to be anything but self-sufficient.

The public policy question here is clear: should taxpayers prop up horseracing with public dollars? It looks like the industry got a subsidy for years, until Governor Janklow and the Legislature said, maybe the State Fair and domestic abuse shelters are higher fiscal priorities. Meanwhile, fewer people want to watch horsies run, and there’s no evidence that throwing our tax dollars at horses will change that decline. Rather than namby-pambilizing as my local paper does about some imaginary injustice (and to what end? a comforting eulogy for an industry dying on its own merits?), we should acknowledge that public interests have changed and that public dollars to prop up horseracing would be wasted.