A new poll shows that 83 percent of Pennsylvania residents favor shifting gaming tax funds long funneled to the horse racing industry be allocated to other state needs.
The poll, commissioned by the Education Voters of Pennsylvania, showed wide support for re-channeling the $240 million annual allocation of casino tax revenues to the horse racing industry through the Race Horse Development Fund, established with the original 2004 Pennsylvania gaming law—which was titled the Pennsylvania Horse Race Development and Gaming Act—that legalized casinos.
The poll follows debate throughout the state generated by Governor Tom Wolf’s proposal last year to shift horse development funds to his proposed Nellie Bly Scholarship Program, designed to aid state university students deal with high tuition and high debt.
The, conducted by the research firm Franklin & Marshall, was conducted June 7-13. It sampled 444 voters, including 205 Democrats, 177 Republicans and 62 Independents and has a margin of error of 6.4 percent.
The 83 percent of the poll’s respondents favoring a shift of the horse racing funds to other purposes compares to only 10 percent that favored keeping the funds with the horse racing industry.
“There is clearly little appetite for taxpayer-funded horse racing,” said Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters of Pennsylvania, said in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “With so many other more pressing needs, it’s hard to justify continuing this program.”
Pete Peterson, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Equine Coalition, told the Post-Gazette that the survey is flawed. “I know from experience that third-party groups can pay Franklin & Marshall to ask specific questions in its poll, which I assume is what happened here,” Peterson said. “So I don’t believe F&M is asking these questions or phrasing them this way.”
He noted that horse racing supports some 20,000 jobs in the state.
Pennsylvania allocates up to 12 percent of slot tax funding to the Race Horse Development Fund, which pays for purses, breeder incentives, drug testing and enforcement activities.
