Horseracing Integrity Act committee hearing scheduled for Jan. 28
A subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing for Jan. 28 to discuss issues surrounding horse racing and a bill that would create a federal framework to regulate the sport, according to the leaders of the committee.
The Jan. 28 hearing will be the first to discuss the current iteration of the legislation, the Horseracing Integrity Act, since the sponsors of the legislation re-introduced the bill in the spring of last year. The legislation, which has been introduced to the House on two other occasions, has yet to face a vote at any level of the federal government.
The hearing will be held by the Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee. The subcommittee is chaired by Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois, who has been highly critical of racing’s current regulation during previous hearings. The full committee is chaired by Rep. Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey.
A witness list for the hearing had not yet been produced by the subcommittee by Wednesday morning.
The legislation has received 226 co-sponsors in the House, according to supporters, and it picked up considerable support in the past eight months, as the racing industry struggled to provide adequate responses to a spate of deaths at Santa Anita Park early in 2019 that drew national attention. The legislation, which was introduced by Rep. Andy Barr, a Republican of Kentucky, and Rep. Paul Tonko, a Democrat from New York, would appoint the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, a non-profit company, as the leader of a board that would devise and enforce medication policies for the racing industry nationwide.
The legislation is not unanimously supported by the racing industry. Racing lobbyists have said that the bill has little chance of passing in the current federal legislative climate without near unanimity, but racing’s struggle over the past year to address injuries and fatalities has changed the calculus to some degree.
