Saddle-sore workers
A thousand OTB workers lost their jobs when the city’s betting parlors were forced to close this week, and they will get nothing other than a typical severance package.
“I’m going to be losing my home,” said Chris Garofolo of Little Neck, Queens, who was a betting clerk at OTB for 31 years. “I have like two months of mortgage money saved up. After that, I don’t have anything.”
Garofolo is 49 and can’t start collecting his pension until he’s 62. He has a 14-year-old son, and his wife’s income won’t pay the bills. And now he has no health benefits.
“Where am I going to go?” he asked. “We were betrayed.”
The state also took a hit with the betting-parlor shutdown as $600 million in pension and debt obligations left by OTB got moved onto the state’s already-stretched tab.

