An obscure Oregon agency props up greyhound and horse racing—and gets chicken feed in return.

BY NIGEL JAQUISS njaquiss@wweek.com

amblers across America wagered $6.4 billion on horses and greyhounds last year thanks to the state of Oregon. It’s more than half of the total amount bet legally on horse and dog racing in the U.S., whether at tracks, at off-track betting parlors or online.

Oregon’s supremacy in the realm of accepting bets on animals— whether the gamblers are in Alaska or New York and whether the dogs or ponies are racing in California or New Zealand—is remarkable for two reasons.

First, there is no almost no animal racing left in the Beaver State. The last dog track, Multnomah Greyhound Park, closed in 2004. Oregon’s last major horse track, Portland Meadows, closed in 2019, replaced by a Legoland of Amazon warehouses.

“It’s unusual that a state that has such a small thumbprint in racing is so important to an overall industry,” says Patrick Cummings of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation, a horse racing industry think tank in Lexington, Ky.

Second, the Oregon Racing Commission, the little-known state agency that presides over this near monopoly, makes almost nothing from it—and far less than it could.

The Racing Commission does so in service of an industry widely criticized for its cruelty to animals (see “Giving Us Paws,” page 16), a concern highlighted by seven equine deaths at Churchill Downs on the eve of the Kentucky Derby earlier this month.

Kitty Martz, executive director of the group Voices of Problem Gambling Recovery, says Oregon provides unhealthy temptations for bettors across the country by making it easy for them to bet on dogs and horses anywhere, anytime.

“My main concern is that when it becomes hand-held digital, research shows the potential for gambling addiction goes way up,” Martz says. To make matters worse, she adds, Oregon facilitates billions of dollars in betting for a pittance: “We [Oregonians] are not benefiting.”

It’s a busy time for the Racing Commission: Two legislative committees have taken an unusual level of interest in it—and the Secretary of State’s Office will soon release an audit. For the past two months, WW has examined hundreds of pages of emails and other documents, and interviewed lawmakers, animal rights advocates, and gambling experts.

What emerges is a picture of an agency shrouded in obscurity, often unaccountable, largely ignored by the Legislature and governor’s office, and apparently in thrall to the industry it regulates. The reasons appear to have less to do with corruption than inattention; out-of-state vice merchants have simply identified Oregon as the nation’s easiest mark.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 o say the Oregon Racing Commission is an afterthought in the state’s bureaucracy would be like saying Jeff Bezos sells a few things online.

The commission’s 15 employees don’t even have an office.

The second and, by law, final term of the Racing Commission’s current chairman, Charles Williamson, ended nearly eight years ago, on Sept. 17, 2015. Yet he remains in charge of the five-member volunteer board appointed by the governor.

“ Why am I still on the commission?” asks Williamson, 79, a Portland lawyer. “I’m not sure. I had two four-year terms, and they never appointed anybody to replace me.” Another commissioner has served four years past her term’s expiration date, and one of five seats on the board recently sat empty for nearly a year.

The Racing Commission, like the Oregon Lottery and the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission, is what’s called an “other funded” agency. Rather than relying on tax dollars for their budgets, such agencies generate cash for the state by working with private industry to sell something: booze, weed or the thrill of gambling.

Compared with the lottery and the OLCC, which generate huge amounts of revenue for the state, the Racing Commission raises almost nothing (see graphs below).

“The Oregon Racing Commission is effectively an extension of the gambling industry,” says Les Bernal, national director of Stop Predatory Gambling. “It’s a con driven by greed, and it doesn’t serve the public’s interest.”

Oregon became the epicenter of remote gambling—what is formally called advance-deposit wagering, or ADW—almost by accident.

During the 1999 legislative session, Dave Nelson, then a lobbyist for Portland Meadows, and the late Mike Dewey, who represented the Multnomah Kennel Club, proposed a moonshot. Both sports were in decline because of the creation of the Oregon Lottery in 1984, the advent of video poker in 1991, and the tribal casinos that soon followed.

“ We were trying to preserve racing,” Nelson recalls. “It was a last-ditch effort to provide some extra revenue for the tracks.”

Nelson proposed an adaptation of online shopping that would allow gamblers from anywhere in the country to bet on dog and horse racing anywhere in the world from their computers.

When people bet on horses or dogs, all their money goes into a parimutuel pool and they bet against each other, rather than betting against “the house” as they do in casinos. By agreeing to serve as the legal host for that pool, Oregon would offer a service no other state was willing to provide.

Taking bets from all over the country and booking them in one state required a legal leap of faith. Oregon lawmakers, unlike those in other states, decided to take the risk. It gave Oregon a first-mover advantage it has never lost.

In essence, the state of Oregon was joining a

DOG’S BEST FRIEND: Carey syndicate with racetracks like Churchill Downs and would earn a tiny piece of the action, which today equates to about 0.05% of the total amount bet—in industry parlance, the handle.

Theil is the Oregon Racing Commission’s leading critic.

Lawmakers approved ADW betting in 1999, unsure if anybody would care. In terms of saving the tracks, it failed. But in terms of attracting gamblers, it succeeded beyond anybody’s wildest dreams, generating billions of dollars in ADW bets even as the number of bettors at horse and dog tracks continues a long-term decline across the country.

“Today, Oregon’s tracks are long gone and this ADW betting is stronger than ever,” says Nelson, who is retired from lobbying but still active in Oregon horse racing issues.

Now, gamblers can use their mobile devices to bet on horses and dogs around the globe—and, more likely than not, those bets get booked in Oregon through one of nine ADW betting hubs arrayed around the metro area.

Oregon now books about 95% of all ADW bets placed nationally—more than all the bettors wagered in person at all the horse tracks in the country last year.

“There is a question of why Oregon’s dominance has continued to persist,” says Cummings of the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation. “It feels like kind of a choke point that so much of the business is focused on a single state.”

Nobody in the U.S. has done more to curtail greyhound racing in the U.S. than Carey Theil, the executive director of Boston-based Grey2K USA. And it is Theil’s work in Salem over the past two years that has focused lawmakers, such as state Reps. John Lively (D-Springfield) and David Gomberg (D-Otis), on ADW betting and the Racing Commission.

Over the past two decades, Theil and his organization have led the passage of 18 anti-greyhound racing laws across the country, leading to the closure of 46 tracks. West Virginia is now the only state in the U.S. that still hosts dog racing—and Theil hopes to put an end to that.

Theil, 45, grew up in Southeast Portland in a family scarred by addiction. An indifferent student, he focused his energy on other interests:

ORC: $.05

WAGES OF SIN: There are three state agencies whose function is to generate revenue through what some people call vices: gambling, booze and cannabis. Here’s how much revenue the state expects each to generate this year: million

Gambling Company, Track and Other Costs: $19.95

CRUMBS FOR OREGON: Of each $100 bet through Oregon’s ADW gambling hubs, $20, the “takeout” goes to cover the expenses of the tracks and wagering companies and other costs. Oregon gets almost nothing.

Prizes for Bettors: $80 the Trail Blazers, chess (he plays at the master level), and the politics of animal rights. He got his start working on a 1994 ballot measure that banned the use of dogs for hunting bears and cougars. That hooked him.

DOGS GONE: Multnomah Greyhound Park could hold 18,670 spectators. It closed in 2004.

In 1997, Theil bought a suit at Goodwill, boarded a Greyhound bus from Portland to the state Capitol, and began testifying on any bill that involved animals or animal rights.

Like Nelson, the Portland Meadows lobbyist, Theil was there at the beginning of ADW betting in Oregon.

“My mother and I were the only opponents of that legislation,” Theil recalls. “I didn’t know what I was doing then, but I testified against it.”

Theil relocated to Boston in 2001 to work on greyhound racing bans in Eastern states, but continued to press Oregon lawmakers about the Multnomah Greyhound Park. In 2004, four years after a trainer’s neglect led to the deaths of six greyhounds in transit from Wood Village to Florida, the park, already suffering from low

CONTINUED ON PAGE 16

THE INQUISITOR: State Rep. David Gomberg (D-Otis) has dogged the Oregon Racing Commission.