The city’s Off-Track Betting Corp. will be broke in less than nine months if Albany doesn’t come up with a new revenue-sharing formula before then, according to an OTB senior official.
OTB Chairman David Cornstein said the city’s only legal bookie is running on empty after operating for four years under a formula imposed by Albany that doesn’t allow it to retain enough of its profits to break even.
OTB rakes in more than $1 billion in bets each year.
“The end of the fiscal year [June 30, 2008], we will be out of money,” Cornstein warned.
State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno suggested this week that a new public authority be created to oversee all of horseracing, including OTB.
“New York City, I think, has made a policy decision to do something different with OTB,” Bruno said.