Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority chairman Scheeler outlines goals

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, the new oversight agency established late last year by federal legislation, expects to be “up and running” in July 2022, its effective date, despite threats of delays from lawsuits and the “steep climb” presented by the work in front of it, the newly elected chairman of the authority said on Wednesday.

Charles Scheeler, who was elected chairman last week, made the prediction during a half-hour question-and-answer session with media members on Wednesday afternoon conducted over an internet-conferencing service, his first public appearance on HISA matters.

During the appearance, Scheeler said that the authority had just begun its work in devising standards that the authority will enforce in all 38 racing states, and he characterized that work as being “very early in the process.” But he said that despite that workload, and despite the potential for complications presented by two separate lawsuits challenging the agency’s legality, HISA officials expected to meet their mandate.

“It’s our intention, and we have every expectation, of being up and running in July ’22, and meeting the deadlines in the act,” Scheeler said.

The establishment of the authority is potentially the most significant overhaul of racing regulation since pari-mutuel betting on racing was established a century ago. Under the current system, racing is regulated on a state-by-state basis, but HISA’s mandate is to establish rules on medication, drug-testing, and safety practices that it will enforce as an umbrella agency across all U.S. states. The act establishing HISA designated the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, a private, non-profit company that conducts testing on behalf of the U.S. Olympic program, as its drug-control partner.

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Scheeler, a lawyer who was the general counsel for former Sen. George Mitchell when the senator led an investigation of doping in Major League Baseball 15 years ago, said that USADA has already begun work on creating standards for medication usage and doping-control programs. He also said that HISA officials would soon begin canvassing the racing industry for input on the sport’s proper regulatory and penalty structures.

“We’re much more in the embryonic stage than the fully formed product,” Scheeler said. ”We’re going to take an awful lot of input from all the constituencies across racing before we come to any final conclusions about what any particular standards are going to be.”

The legislation gives the authority the power to assess racing participants in states for its funding, a complicated process that is expected to present a large amount of pushback from some states, two of which have joined in a lawsuit challenging the authority’s power to make those assessments. Scheeler said that the authority would begin working on budgeting matters later this year, and that it would approach states after those budgets have been worked out.

“We’re very mindful of this issue,” Scheeler said, in reference to the difficulty in getting broad support for changing funding requirements in some states. “We don’t want to destroy the village to save it, we want to do this in an economically pragmatic manner.”

While Scheeler did not provide many specifics on how the authority would operate or on its expected regulations and penalties, he did predict that having uniform rules in all racing states and a single agency to oversee investigations would bear fruit for the sport.

“You’re always going to have people in any industry who say, ‘Hey we don’t need any regulation, thanks but no thanks,’ ” Scheeler said. “But our essential premise is this, that a cleaner and fairer sport is also going to be a more popular sport.”