The new Buffalo representative on New York’s Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. is spearheading a drive to make it easier for bars and restaurants to add OTB terminals.
To do that, she is targeting a state law that gives Hamburg Gaming, owned by the Erie County Agricultural Society’s Buffalo Trotting Association Inc. and operated by Delaware North, the right to veto the placement of any new OTB terminals, called EZ Bet, within a 30-mile radius of its racetrack.
That means Hamburg Gaming has power over where terminals can go in Erie County or most of Niagara County.
Crystal Rodriguez-Dabney, former deputy mayor to Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, said she plans to ask the OTB agency’s lobbyists to work on changing that law in the current legislative session to allow Buffalo and Western New York bar and restaurant owners to freely add OTB terminals to their businesses.
“I think it’s important because it’s an opportunity for small businesses to be able to make a little bit of extra money,” Rodriguez-Dabney said, according to Investigative Post. “Looking at the other municipalities that have businesses that have this, it’s been beneficial to them, so why should city businesses miss out?”
Rodriguez-Dabney stressed that OTB terminals are a way small businesses can continue to thrive. “For doing nothing but allowing for a corner in your business, you’re making extra bucks,” she said. “If that’s $5,000 a year, that’s $5,000 of passive income, quite honestly, that may be able to help keep a business afloat or help with investments or help with something.”
Ryan Hasenauer, OTB’s marketing director, said the 30-mile rule should be eliminated.
“I don’t think that if we had an E-Z Bet that was somewhere within a certain radius in Buffalo that it would prevent people from still going to visit the track and still making those wagers on their property,” Hasenauer told Investigative Post. “Watching