New York Racing Association chairman and CEO Barry K. Schwartz yesterday angrily denounced a report issued by the office of N.Y. State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer that attacked NYRA’s operation of the state’s major racetracks.
The 64-page study accused the association of tolerating corruption on the part of pari-mutuel clerks and other employees, sharply criticized NYRA president and COO Terry Meyocks and his security staff, and suggested replacing NYRA as manager of Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga.
“This was strictly sensationalism on the part of the attorney general,” Schwartz said. “[He] has issued a report filled with half-truths, misleading inferences, and inaccuracies . . . the result of a nearly three-year-long investigation that was bungled by the attorney general’s investigators from the start.”
Calling those investigators “the gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” Schwartz said, “What little knowledge [they] have of the racing industry came from Terry Meyocks and the cooperation of NYRA. I can’t tell you the number of tips we’ve given them, the police and FBI.
“The result, after all this voluntary cooperation, is a slanderous report that is short on truth and long on fiction. Unfortunately, the real victims are the taxpayers and citizens of New York, who have had to foot the bill for this debacle.”
Labeling the report a politically motivated “witch hunt,” Schwartz said he does not fear any repercussions.
“I think the governor and legislators know better and are happy with the way NYRA is run. [The AG’s office] kept looking for a smoking gun and couldn’t find it. We have nothing to hide, because we haven’t done anything wrong.”
Rushing to the defense of Meyocks, whom the report accused of misusing his expense account, Schwartz said, “No one who has taken the time to know Terry has ever come away with the impression he is anything other than a person of impeccable character and integrity. I believe the attorney general personally knows this, and I am saddened he would put his own agenda ahead of the truth.”
