Idaho horse racing industry will survive, but it was a photo finish

POCATELLO — Idaho horse racing is no longer on life support.

With the passing of Senate Bill 1178, the Idaho State Racing Commission will be financially stabilized through taxes collected from advanced deposit wagering — online horse betting.

The bill was written after members of the state’s racing community were challenged by the state to find a permanent solution, according to Bryon Goody, the president of the East Idaho Horsemen’s Association.

“The governor asked us a couple years ago to put a plan together, as an industry, to help fund the racing commission,” Goody told EastIdahoNews.com. “He didn’t want a Band-Aid.”

The bill, as Goody puts it, is the commission’s attempt to “divide the pie in a different way.” The pie is gambling taxes, and a big piece of it is going to the current $141,000 operational deficit facing the racing commission.

With sponsorship from State Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, SB-1178 was passed by the State Senate with a 25-6 vote on March 17. But it nearly died there.

For more than a month, SB-1178 sat on the desk of House State Affairs Committee Chair Brent Crane, R-Nampa, who said it represented a moral conundrum — support for gambling.

“He’s on his moral high-horse,” Guthrie said as the bill sat on Crane’s desk. “He doesn’t think gambling is something people should be doing. My opinion is, it’s legally sanctioned by the state, and if people don’t bet on horse racing, they’ll maybe bet on something else.”

Finally, Crane sponsored it through the State Affairs Committee and sent it to the House for a vote, according to Goody. And it passed with a final vote of 58-1 on May 5. Crane himself voted in support of the bill — only Steven Harris, R-Meridian, voted against it.

EastIdahoNews.com could not reach Crane for comment on the bill.

Although the bill eventually passed and was signed into law by Gov. Brad Little earlier this month, some frustration on the part of Goody and the racing community lingers.

In speaking with EastIdahoNews.com, Goody addressed the “multi-, multi-million-dollar ripple effect” the death of horse racing would have brought to the state of Idaho. He spoke of veterinarian clinics that would be destroyed by the lack of treatment provided to horses. He spoke of farms whose primary function is growing feed for horse ranches. He spoke of the horse ranches themselves, which provide horses throughout the state but operate mainly to produce racing horses.

Goody’s family represents that population. They have operated a horse ranch outside of Pocatello for at least four generations. Had horse racing been allowed to die in Idaho, he would have had little choice but to pack up his things and move out of state, he said.

He viewed the holdup by Crane as using the entire industry as a pawn to serve his own political gain.

“We’ve seen where we’ve been used as a pawn — this bill has been used as a pawn at the Capitol building between House and Senate who try to get other things passed back and forth,” Goody said. “When legislators start using industries as pawns to get their own personal agendas passed, that’s when we need to, as a state, take a really hard look at ourselves in the mirror and decide what we want to become.”

Guthrie expressed similar frustrations. When the bill he had sponsored collected dust on Crane’s desk, Guthrie called the delay a “black mark on the political process in Idaho.”

But, despite the frustration, the bill was allowed to see the floor of the House, and Idaho-born horses will continue circling Idaho tracks.