CHICAGO – The bomb dropped last week at the annual Illinois Racing Board dates awards meeting turned out to be a dud. After essentially threatening to pull Arlington’s racetrack operator’s license at its Sept. 17 dates-award meeting and convening a special committee to investigate Churchill Downs Inc.’s decision not to apply for a casino license at Arlington, the IRB on Tuesday unanimously approved the 2020 racing schedule that had been submitted before the regularly scheduled meeting. It took little time Tuesday to understand that the IRB had made no progress during the one-week recess in attempts to convince CDI to reconsider its position on the Arlington casino. Former IRB executive director and current consultant Marc Laino had been appointed a liaison between the three-commissioner committee and CDI and just after the start of the meeting was called upon by chairman Jeff Brincat to present his findings. “I’ve had several conversations with [Arlington president] Tony Petrillo,” Laino said. “Some good conversations, some very disheartening. As of 3 p.m. yesterday the position of the applicant is that their position regarding pursuing a gaming license remains unchanged.” Hawthorne in Chicago and Fairmount Park in southern Illinois have applied for casino licenses and could be taking casino bets before the end of 2020 that contribute to falling Illinois purses. CDI shortly before the late August license application deadline issued a news release that said they’d pass on a casino, citing unfavorable conditions. CDI is the majority owner of Rivers Casino, Illinois’s largest, which sits about 13 miles from Arlington. The company also is an active bidder to operate a large casino slated for Waukegan. There’s widespread speculation that CDI will attempt to have the gambling expansion law that passed hurriedly in June favorably amended during the Illinois legislature’s fall veto session. Commissioner Thomas McCauley, who made the motion to delay the dates awards a week, tried to pry information regarding CDI’s plans and position from Brad Blackwell, a CDI senior vice president and counsel who testified Tuesday along with Petrillo. Those efforts went nowhere. “We have publicly stated that there are issues with the gaming bill that would be problematic with us opening a casino at Arlington Park,” Blackwell said. “We cannot speak about our legislative strategy here.” McCauley near meeting’s end said a racing-schedule agreement between Arlington and Hawthorne and the necessity for some semblance of 2020 continuity had swayed his original position, within which he pressed Petrillo hard last week to demonstrate that CDI still had a commitment to Illinois racing. “I’m convinced the agreement among the parties ought to be given a lot of weight, at least for 2020,” McCauley said. In an interview after the meeting, McCauley said he realized over the course of the last week that the strong stance he articulated Sept. 17 had little backing from other Board members. “I could read the tea leaves,” he said. Blackwell tried to clarify language from the August press release from CDI rejecting the casino that had angered McCauley and other Board members. In it, CDI said they were committed to racing at Arlington in 2020 and 2021 while also mentioning the chance of relocating Arlington within Illinois. McCauley said the mention of specific years felt like a threat to close the track, while sternly reminding Petrillo that it was the IRB that ultimately determined where, when, and if a so-called “organizational licensee” like Arlington could race. Blackwell denied that CDI implied Arlington wouldn’t race past 2021 and said the company fully understood that that Arlington couldn’t be moved unilaterally. Arlington’s was the only testimony taken at the meeting and Brincat’s motion to approve the schedule formed from the dates applications submitted to the IRB in July quickly was seconded and unanimously approved. Hawthorne will go ahead with its plan to forego a spring 2020 race meeting while construction commences on its casino, but it will host a winter-spring Standardbred meeting it says can more safely and practically go on despite the construction. Arlington’s season spans early May through late September and will encompass a mere 68 days. Hawthorne will run a 37-day Thoroughbred meeting next fall and winter. Fairmount is scheduled to race 60 days between March and September. The IRB also gave 12 Standardbred programs to be run in December 2020 to Playing in the Park LLC, the company that intends to build a new harness racino and hotel in Tinley Park, a south suburb of Chicago. Land for that project still is owned by the state but regulators apparently are counting on assurances that the process will move quickly. Arlington is the so-called dark-host track from January through March, meaning they get the lion’s share of revenue derived from simulcast betting during the period when there’s no live racing in Chicago. They’re likely to need every penny, too. Arlington overnight purses fell from about $173,000 during 2018 to roughly $145,000 this season, and the purse account is ending this year in worse shape than last. Officials for the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association believe Arlington overnight purses for 2020 could average a paltry $130,000 under the current framework. That could lead to conflict when the ITHA and Arlington try to hammer out a contract for the meet. At the Sept. 17 hearing, the Illinois Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Foundation suggested Arlington abandon the Arlington Million, the Beverly D., and the Secretariat and use that purse money for overnights, a position the ITHA could also stake out. But following Tuesday's meeting, Petrillo said the 2020 stakes schedule would differ only marginally from that of 2019. Another avenue the ITHA will pursue involves recapture, the process through which Illinois tracks deduct money each year from their purse accounts according to an arcane, antiquated formula that became law when full-card simulcasting was legalized in 1995. The law (which ceases to apply to a track once it begins getting money from a casino) was meant to compensate tracks for betting handle migrating from more lucrative live races to out-of-state signals, and while helpful to track operators has turned into another major drag on the local purse structure. McCauley raised the recapture issue while questioning Petrillo and Blackwell, and while that exchange went nowhere, the subject is likely to come up again.