It's Those Friends Again

- It seems as if every time some further revelation about Joe Bruno comes out, it somehow involves racing and, in many cases, leads right to Friends of New York Racing. The Albany Times-Union, in two articles published on Sunday, reported that the State Police kept detailed itineraries of Bruno's taxpayer-funded helicopter trips to New York long before Spitzer took office - going back to the Pataki Administration in 2004 - and then revealed details of some of those trips. Not surprisingly, the excursions described contained very little of the official state business that caused Bruno to take the trip on the public's tab.

One of these supposedly business-related trips to New York at taxpayer expense detailed by the paper tells of one that took place in late October, 2004. At that time, the report goes, Bruno dined with Tim Smith, former NYRA chairman Ogden 'Dinny' Phipps, and Jared Abbruzzese in a private room in an exclusive Manhattan restaurant. According to the timeline presented in the Thacher report on Empire Racing, this took place after Smith eliminated himself from consideration to be NYRA CEO by telling Neil Getnick of his plans to take the franchise private with a little help from his Friends. So what exactly Mr. Phipps was doing at this particular meeting of the minds, I can't really say. Getnick revealed last week that he's been questioned by federal prosecutors in regard to their investigation of the relationship between Bruno and Abrruzzese.

In any event, one would think that the Senate Republicans would now try to quietly slink away from their insistence on investigating Spitzer's office - at the cost of at least $500,000 of additional taxpayer money. The tide of the news, and of public opinion, is , seems to be turning against them as it becomes clear that Bruno's abuse of the system is the real crime here. They could then concentrate on more important things.

Like insisting on once again having the four three franchise applicants make their cases. Oh man, talk about wasting taxpayer money!! NYRA, the persistent Capital Play, and the obnoxiously shameless and insufferable Empire Racing will do just that on Wedensday. For heaven's sake.

Maybe that's part of the reason why Charlie Hayward came off as being rather belligerent last week, telling the Saratogian that NYRA could reopen its land claim if no agreement is reached by Dec 31; and that it would not let the state use its tracks to run racing. On one hand, it doesn't really seem to be in the spirit of the association's non-profit status for Hayward to threaten a shutdown of racing under any circumstances. But with the Senate Republicans posturing instead of moving forward with what, under the circumstances and given the deficiencies of the competition, is clearly the most logical solution, who could blame him if he's getting a little ticked off? I think it's fair to criticize Hayward for adopting that attitude, but not without also condemning these politicians who we know don't really give a rat's ass about the racing industry except when they're using it as another political football to try and score points against Spitzer. So I'm going to give Hayward the benefit of the doubt on this one.