New budget proposal creating fear amongst the horse racing industry

(Wolf) — Governor Wolf's new budget plan proposes to move 199 million dollars that would typically fund Pennsylvania's horse racing industry to create a new scholarship program, Nellie Bly Tuition Program aimed at helping college students graduate with less debt.

We spoke with Pete Peterson, the spokes person for The Pennsylvania Equine Coalition to get his reaction on the proposal.

"The Governors budget proposal has proposed transferring 199 million dollars from the race horse development trust fund and that money is really used for the purses and the breeders incentives in Pennsylvania. It is what keeps the horse racing industry going here in our state. It's why people own and race horses to compete for those purses and basically they use those purses to provide feed and training for the horses, to pay the jockeys or drivers for the horses. To go out and pay for their up keep of their farms and barns so without that money horse racing would cease to exist here in Pennsylvania," Peterson said.

Peterson explained to us that horse racing is a large economic industry in Pennsylvania.

"When people think about horse racing they tend to think it's individuals who work at a race track for example, but really the impact is much broader. There are people who either work in the industry directly or rely on the industry for their jobs. so you have everything from veteranizes to blacksmiths that are directly related, but you have horse breeders, you have people who work at the farms who care for the horses. Then you get all the farmers who provide the feed and the hay at the feed mills in Pennsylvania that rely on the horse racing industry as their costumers. Then you have the construction industry. People who build farms, build fences and repair the barns and fences for the industry. So it really has a much broader impact then I think many people realize," Peterson said.

Peterson commented on how the plan would impact Pennsylvania's Agricultural industry, especially hay farmers.

"The horse racing industry buys the top level of the hay, the highest and best product so they set the market price and then they hay goes out for other purposes. If the horse racing industry isn't setting the market price it is going to cause the entire market, the hay industry to be depressed which is going to hurt those farmers and put a lot of those hay farmers out of business. So it is going to have a trickle down effect that will ripple through out the economy in Pennsylvania," Peterson said.

Peterson tells us that the money that goes into the Race Horse Development and Trust fund, comes from revenue from slot machines at casinos. But Governor Wolf wants to redirect those funds to help struggling college students.

In order to get slot machines legalized Track operators made a deal that the state's horse racing industry would get a percentage of the slot profits.

Peterson agrees with Wolf that student debt is a problem, but is asking him to find another way to fund the program without hurting Pennsylvania's Agricultural industry.

"Everybody realizes that student debt is a problem, that the rising cost of tuition to attend college is a problem, but you don't solve one debt problem by putting an entire industry out of business and putting 20,000 people out of work so it is a worthy goal to try to address the rising cost of tuition of colleges, but you can't fix that by putting an entire industry out of business that supports 20,000 families here in Pennsylvania," Peterson said.

Governor Wolf tried to pass a similar proposal to divert money from the horse racing industry last year, but it in never went through.