Not only is this unfair, it seems so shameful and disingenious. Can't people see what is going on? If I was the guy proposing this, I would be so embarrassed I could not show my face.

As I understood it, the NYRA agreed to allow Aqueduct to be largely replaced with a casino in exchange for benefiting from the casino. That sounds like a reasonable exchange to me. Now all of sudden, after the exchange is made, the state wants to re-write the deal? No business in their right mind would have ever allowed the majority of their property, customers, business, goodwill to be usurped by a competing business unless they were getting something in return -- which in theory the NYRA was supposed to get the benefit of. Now the state says the racing is supposed to run stand alone? That is a complete ff'ing rewrite of history. How is it supposed to be a stand alone business when it allowed a huge competitor to take most of its customers, business, and space? Am I missing something here? To me, this is transparently ridiculous.

This would be like building a building and renting all the office space to the state. You expect them to be a tenant according to the long term lease and you rely on that rent. Then, one year into the deal, they say they should be able to keep the space but not have to pay rent and instead you should be able to support your whole building cost on just the revenue from retail space on the bottom floor. If the state tried that with anybody else, they would be laughed off the planet and whoever proposed such a thing should be totally embarrassed. Where I come from, it does not pass the redface test.

Also, I would say the appearances are even worse. If this comes to pass, it will look like the state wanted to build casinos to extract money from the people but knew that was not politically feasible. So, they used the convenience of the racetracks already being there as "cover" or a "beard" for their real intent. Now that they have the casinos up and running, they are ready to kill off their "accomplice" to take the whole pie. By almost any standard of ethical and fair dealing, this is a total sham.

This is really making my blood boil.