By admin 
Let the record reflect that for all the anti-HISA caterwauling heard around the world of Thoroughbred racing, only one person – one person! – took the time to file a comment with the Federal Trade Commission over the Horseracing Integrity & Safety Authority’s proposed 2027 budget. Congratulations, David Rizzo, whoever you may be. Your comment – “HISA is a waste of taxpayer money and has done absolutely nothing to clean up the sport. The budget should be $0” – is now an indelible part of the history of HISA and the FTC’s role in overseeing it. Rizzo’s wrong about HISA’s work, of course, but I give him credit for taking the time to post a comment. That’s better than the rest of HISA’s critics who spend hours online blasting regulators.
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I hear frequently from horse people who take the time to write to me with their criticisms of HISA and its enforcement arm, the Horseracing Integrity & Welfare Unit. I get it. Folks figure it’s easier or safer to complain to me about the new racing regulators than it is to complain directly to those regulators. Some of the notes I receive are truly pathetic and say much more about the writer’s lack of understanding about what HISA is or does than anything else. But some of the emails I receive are articulate and raise interesting questions about the new regulators. Sometimes, when I get those emails, I write back and invite the writer to send the same note to HISA or HIWU or the FTC. Don’t boo at me, I keep saying, vote by telling regulators what you think.
HISA first submitted its proposed 2027 budget in July and invited public comment on it. The first deadline for such comments was July 27. HISA wrote: “Following the expiration of the public comment period, HISA will review and consider all relevant feedback before sending the proposed budget to the HISA Board. If approved by the HISA Board, the proposed budget would then be submitted to the Federal Trade Commission.” I wrote about the proposed budget twice in July, including a Keeping Pace column on July 27 in which HISA answered questions about the budget. “Reducing the overall cost of HISA to the industry remains a top priority, and we are focused on identifying efficiencies and other opportunities to reduce costs,” HISA said.
A week later, HISA told the FTC that it was filing its proposed budget for review. A month after that, last week, FTC officials announced that HISA’s “budget submission complies with the requirements” of federal law” and invited “comments from the public on the Authority’s 2027 budget.” Those comments, FTC tells us, can’t be about any old anti-HISA complaint but “should address” the following standard: “The Commission will approve the proposed budget if the Commission determines that, on balance, the proposed budget is consistent with and serves the goals of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act in a prudent and cost-effective manner and that its anticipated revenues are sufficient to meet its anticipated expenditures.”
The FTC last week also gave us some details about how HISA’s budget process works. From the FTC’s notice filed in the Federal Register: “The initial draft of the Proposed Budget was approved unanimously by the Authority’s Board of Directors before it was posted on the HISA website for public comment. After the initial draft of the Proposed Budget was posted on the HISA website, the Authority identified the following changes: reduction of the salary and payroll tax expense line items in the Veterinary Services budget; reduction of the travel line item in the Administration budget; and an increase in the professional services line item in the Administration budget. The net effect of these changes is a $14,000 increase of the Proposed Budget (gross).8 These changes were incorporated into the final Proposed Budget circulated to the Board of Directors for approval. No other changes were made to the Proposed Budget.”
HISA’s budget request is smaller than it was last year, which was smaller than it was the year before that. Nevertheless, I remember that a great deal of angst was expressed online in July when HISA’s proposed new budget was first announced. I remember another wave of allegations and suspicions expressed about HISA’s budget when the Grammgate scandal hit. As far as I can tell, none of the hand-wringers who had so many questions about HISA’s budget have taken the time to submit their budget-related questions and concerns to the only federal entity that can do something about it. The next deadline to submit comments to the FTC is ten days away. Speak now about the budget or stop Tweeting about it forever.
Jokers’ wild
The great thing about social media in horse racing is that it brings local stories about good horses and good horse people to a national audience, almost instantaneously, almost all the time. The bad thing about social media in horse racing (see above) is that it brings together conspiracy theorists from around the globe who are only too happy to amplify each other’s suspicions or allegations or pathologies. Sometimes the online conversation surrounding HISA and racing integrity reminds me of the old Batman movie in which the Joker allied himself with The Riddler and the Penguin in an effort to beat the dynamic duo. Quantity doesn’t equal quality when it comes to online theories about who is (or is not) secretly colluding with whom.
To accuse the Paulick Report of being in cahoots with The Jockey Club* and/or the Horseracing Integrity & Safety Authority is to cynically believe the worst about journalism and journalists and to be willfully ignorant of Ray Paulick’s long career covering Thoroughbred racing. Paulick, let’s all agree, is not a big cahooter. And to accuse Paulick Report editor Chelsea Hackbarth, an excellent journalist, of allowing The Jockey Club to write and answer their own questions last week isn’t just demeaning to her, it’s also a projection by her accusers. What in their own history with journalism, or racing, makes them assume the worst about an interview? As sponsors or advertisers, do they pressure journalists? I know from experience The Jockey Club doesn’t.
Here is Hackbarth’s interview. Read it if you have not. Focus more on answers than questions. Here’s one response: “The Jockey Club does not have any role in setting, reviewing, or testing HISA’s controls of The Jockey Club licensed data provided to them.” Here’s another response: “The Jockey Club affiliated companies did not participate in designing, developing, testing, securing, or maintaining any HISA systems.” And here’s a third TJC response: “HISA has a federally mandated responsibility, overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. In addition, HISA has its own, independent governance structure, with a board of directors. To assert that The Jockey Club maintains any level of control of HISA is simply not true.”
It’s not that complicated. Sometimes a duck is just a duck. Hackbarth asked a series of direct questions. The Jockey Club answered them. That happens a thousand times a day between journalists and newsmakers. Most people read The Jockey Club’s answers, considered them in the context of questions about HISA and Grammgate, and either believed them or didn’t. Some read The Jockey Club’s answers and decided to complain that those answers are part of an elaborate (but senseless) conspiracy. Sound and fury, sure, but a needless distraction. The thing about an unproven collusion argument or a conspiracy theory is that it seeks to free the accuser from having to wrestle with the substance of what is said.
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Horse racing does not need a Repole-funded investigation into Grammgate
So don’t waste your time and energy blaming The Jockey Club for Grammgate. Don’t blame the media. Blame Marshall Gramm. And blame racing regulators for not catching him sooner. The real story now is what HISA and the Federal Trade Commission are going to do in the wake of the scandal. On that front, the most significant thing that happened last week was HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus’ open letter to the FTC responding to the allegations made by Churchill Downs, Inc. in that company’s own open letter to the FTC. I wrote a bit about CDI’s kvetch session in last week’s Keeping Pace column (third item). It was smart of Lazarus to respond publicly to the allegations. I hope that everyone who read CDI’s accusations also reads HISA’s responses.
For example, everyone in racing should read this graph from HISA’s response: “Unfortunately, data breaches have become an all-too-common occurrence for organizations maintaining large amounts of data. This includes CDI’s account wagering site, TwinSpires.com, who, according to the Paulick Report, was ‘the victim of a cyber attack’ that involved ‘the intrusion into computer records’ in 2012.Additionally, several major companies and organizations with budgets far larger than HISA’s have reportedly suffered major data thefts and cybersecurity incidents in 2026.” (Footnotes omitted by me). No, it doesn’t justify what Gramm did or excuse HISA from culpability for not securing its system more fully. But it is important context.
So are the steps HISA took when it finally found out about the problem. Again, from Lazarus’ response to CDI: “In HISA’s case, within weeks of discovering the issue, HISA triggered its cyber insurance policy and retained an independent third-party cybersecurity expert to conduct a forensic investigation, identified Dr. Gramm as the individual responsible, publicly disclosed Dr. Gramm and the vulnerability that was exploited, notified law enforcement, initiated an internal enforcement action against Dr. Gramm and updated our systems to address the exploited vulnerability.” That’s a good start, many horse people would agree. That’s not nearly enough, say some of racing’s most ardent anti-HISA voices.
Including people like Thoroughbred owner and breeder Mike Repole. His latest contribution to the Grammgate scandal is to link The Jockey Club to the problem and then offer to pay $10 million to fund what he calls “an independent” investigation into what happened. First, private entities don’t get to investigate regulators. Second, the FTC itself will conduct the investigation, with help from the Justice Department and other federal law enforcement agencies if necessary. Second, HISA cannot take donations. Third, imagine the hullabaloo from Repole if the investigation that he paid $10 million to fund uncovered (as it surely will) no grand conspiracy? At that point, the conspiracy theorists will then have to add the FTC to the plot.
Perhaps with this in mind, Lazarus took care to copy on her letter to the FTC ten members of Congress who were instrumental in the passage of HISA in 2020 and who are likely still interested in its fate. Senators Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell and Maria Cantwell got copied on the HISA letter. So did Reps. James Comer, Robert Garcia, Andy Barr, Paul Tonko, Brett Guthrie, Frank Pallone and Morgan McGarvey. This isn’t just a courtesy. It’s good politics. HISA wants these congressional benefactors to know that CDI’s beef with HISA is precisely the sort of beef that Congress wanted a national, uniform regulatory body like HISA to deal with. After all, a regulatory regime that doesn’t tick off big corporations is no regulatory regime at all, right?
Notes
On horse slaughter, no response from Pennsylvania. And an unhelpful response from New York. I promised in last week’s column that I would keep trying to get more information about Rotz’s Livestock, a Pennsylvania horse operation that allegedly supplies horses that are sent to Canada for slaughter. A New York state police spokesperson told me that New York had done all it could under that state’s law by arresting the driver of a truck alleging carrying horses to slaughter but offered no information on whether New York law enforcement agencies are coordinating with the Pennsylvania counterparts on the case. Pennsylvania officials, meanwhile, did not respond to my repeated requests for comment. I will keep trying.
Shenanigans. The aforementioned Repole doesn’t just see collusion that doesn’t exist between HISA and The Jockey Club. He also apparently sees collusion between The Jockey Club and the folks who run the Keeneland September Sale because some of the people who lead the TJC are also among those who lead Keeneland. In a social media post last week, Repole offered an example of what he believes was some shady business on a horse he bid on last year. It’s silly to blame The Jockey Club for sale antics by sellers and consignors but the concern is a legitimate one. There is far too little transparency when it comes to bidding at both Standardbred and Thoroughbred horse sales. And I say that as both a buyer and a breeder.
Credit where it is due. As I have written many times before, Joe Faraldo has been a disaster as head of the United States Trotting Association. He has steered the most powerful and important group in harness racing away from the only future the Standardbred industry has. But as the president of the New York Standardbred Owners Association? He’s a smash hit and has been for decades. The latest example was a new commitment from MGM Resorts, the racino company that owns and operates Yonkers Raceway, that it will contribute $550,000 toward the promotion of harness racing in New York. That’s a drop in the bucket to MGM, but it will surely help New York racing. Faraldo did that. Good for him and for Empire State horse folks.
*Standard disclosure: The Jockey Club is a sponsor of this column. There are other sponsors. No sponsors of this column exert any pressure, editorially or otherwise, on its contents.
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This story was originally published September 14, 2026 at 10:17 AM.