I have written before about how completely useless meetings of Governor Cuomo’s Reorganization Board of Directors meetings of the New York Racing Association have been. They have consistently been devoid of anything approaching serious content, and are a complete waste of time. Now, however, they appear to be trying to outdo the silliness of a prior meeting by having an even more ridiculous one.
Today’s meeting was announced on late Friday afternoon. The agenda was made available on Sunday afternoon. You know, timing designed to attract the maximum level of interest. NYRA could not even get the meeting announcement straight and had to issue three of them. The first omitted one of the video conference locations. The second omitted the date and time of the meeting. The third – 90 minutes before the meeting – got it all together.
In anticipation of yet another colossal waste of time, I would not even drive to Albany to watch the video conference there, and instead tried to watch the webcast. In a day and age when web casting is a remarkablly useful and common tool, NYRA cannot even seem to get that right. Today’s meeting lasted all of 51 minutes. The quality of the webcast so dismal that I think I heard one complete sentence. The broadcast was interrupted 120 times by freezing of the screen and sound. If anything, I under counted.
What is even more troubling, however, is that I do not think I missed much. We had CEO Chris Kay’s repetitive and typical blather – did you know that there were 750 HD televisions at Saratoga? If you have heard him speak any time in the past year, you would. I will see if any of the reporters who endured this session have anything new to report before I look for a hopefully coherent version to appear on NYRA’s web site.
At the end of the meeting, Board Chairman David Skorton apologized for scheduling so many meetings. He should instead be apologizing for wasting everyone’s time by chairing meetings at which nothing ever happens.