What is the Racehorse Development Fund?

The Race Horse Development Fund provides $240 million per year in taxpayer-funded subsidies to wealthy horseracing enthusiasts and hobbyists. Since 2004, Pennsylvania’s horse racing industry has received a staggering $3 billion in revenues. The money is used to pad cash prizes and inflate pensions for wealthy horse owners, breeders, and trainers. It also funds drug testing for horses and advertising costs for racetrack marketing, among other things.

The system is also rife with conflicts of interest and self-dealing. The industry regulatory body, the State Racing Commission, is run by the horseman – the very beneficiaries of millions of state dollars in subsidies. 
The breeding funds operate with little public oversight and very little accountability to taxpayers. Meanwhile, inadequate state funding for early childhood education in PA means that more than half of preschoolers who are eligible for publicly funded, high-quality pre-k don’t get to attend. Pennsylvania college graduates carry the 2nd highest student debt in the nation. Pennsylvania ranks 47th out of 50 states for investment per capita in higher education. And, Pennsylvania ranks 46th in the nation for covering the cost of K-12 education.

Instead of funding wealthy horse hobbyists, we should be putting the hundreds of millions in annual subsidies toward Pennsylvania students. It’s time to start putting the education of children over the hobbies of billionaires. 

What Can You Do?

Billions of dollars of Pennsylvanians’ hard-earned tax dollars have been used to enrich small number of wealthy racing enthusiasts and hobbyists—many of whom do not live in Pennsylvania. It’s time to end the millions in subsidies for wealthy horse owners and instead invest those hard-earned tax dollars where they belong: Pennsylvania’s students. Tell your state lawmakers that we can no longer afford to bankroll the sport of kinds. We need them to fund kids over race horsing.

Racing's Impact on Horses

Lucrative purses create an incentive for owners to buy inexpensive and possibly unhealthy horses to run them for a quick profit and destroy them at the track after the race if they become injured.

While issues related to the safety of horses and riders, or the treatment of animals used in horse racing are not in the scope of this paper, one fact does stand out: in 2019, the track with the greatest number of racehorse deaths was Parx Racing, with 59 dead horses.
 
In 2019, 116 horses were killed at Pennsylvania tracks.
Education Voters of Pennsylvania
www.educationvoterspa.org

The Campaign to Stop Racing Subsidies - PA
www.stopracingsubsidiespa.org