view raw text
Off-Track Betting Gets Hearing Next Wednesday Two San Franciscans to Testify Before Wicks Panel at Saratoga ALBANY, N. Y., Aug. 19. Complete details of a possible application of off-track betting to New York State, as offered by the so-called suburban pari-mutuel system, will be considered at a hearing called for next Wednesday at Saratoga Springs by senate majority leader Arthur L. Wicks, chairman of the joint legislative committee to study horse racing. The hearing will take place in the morning at the Hall of Springs and in attendance will be Howard E. Booker of San Francisco and associate, Robert Mc-Intyre. Booker presented testimony at a committee hearing" in New York City last December and agreed to submit at a later date a proposal including operation and labor cost figures for New York State. These are to be presented to the committee by Booker and Mclntyre at Wednesdays meeting. In announcing the hearing here today, Senator Wicks emphasized that the summoning of the San Francisco men was not to be taken as an indication that the committee favored off-track betting, but was intended merely to get additional information on the only concrete detailed plan offered to the committee to date. Wicks declared that the voluminous testimony, both for arid against off-track betting, has been submitted to the committee "with the bulk of the testimony so far in opposition to it." This committee was created by the 1951 legislature following a decision by the court of appeals that legislation delegation of licensing power over racing was unconstitutional. In addition to Senator Wicks, the vice chairman is assemblyman William J. Reid, the secretary is senator Harry Giddelson and the other members are senators George T. Manniny and Henry Neddo and assemblymen Theodore Hill, Jr., and J. Sidney Levine Stowell.
