Flatter: Ky. commission does not live up to transparency claim

Who knew the Land of Oz was not in the dreamscape of a concussed, farm girl from Kansas but, instead, at some non-descript, office building near a horse park in Fayette County, Ky.?

Pay no attention to the three people behind the curtain who are judging Bob Baffert and deciding whether the result of last year’s Kentucky Derby should be overturned. That may as well have been the message from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.

“This commission is committed to transparency,” KHRC chairman Jonathan Rabinowitz declared at a Tuesday meeting. “... We’ve begun the process of making significant changes to (regulations) in order to ensure that this commission remains an industry leader in transparent government.”

RELATED: Baffert hearing gets no quick decision.

“An industry leader”? Seriously, Mr. Rabinowitz? On what curve are you grading? The College of Cardinals is more transparent when it blows its smoke. At least it admits when it is electing a new Pope.

The KHRC would not even confirm that three stewards held that Zoom meeting with Baffert on Monday. Rabinowitz did not say so Tuesday, even if it was the obvious reason for his dubious declaration. Repeated questions about it to a KHRC spokesperson have gotten no answers.

From what we know through Baffert’s attorneys, this shining example of your democracy at work took three hours. Stewards heard arguments and evidence about why Medina Spirit should not be disqualified as the winner of the Derby after testing positive for betamethasone last spring.

Baffert flew in to Kentucky from Southern California, and one of his lawyers jetted in from Oklahoma, yet the stewards would not invite everyone into a single meeting room. Word is they claimed COVID. How convenient.

This transparency business is not just about the Baffert case. Far from it.

Rewind to May 4, 2019, when the same three stewards – Barbara Borden, Butch Becraft and Tyler Picklesimer – showed up in the Churchill Downs media center 2 1/2 hours after they disqualified Maximum Security from his Derby triumph.

Borden read a 103-word statement. That took 58 seconds. Then the three of them got up and left.

My colleague Tom Pedulla and I then made like reporters barking at the President during a White House photo op.

“Why no questions? Why no transparency?” I yelled.

Borden shot me a look like I had just broken a piece of fine china.

“Why do you feel like you shouldn’t take any questions?” Pedulla asked. “Isn’t it your duty to take some questions?”

Silence.

“Why no inquiry?” I asked, trying to get into the specifics of the DQ. “Why did it take an objection?”

Crickets.

We were told later the stewards were duty-bound by KHRC regulations not to interact with reporters. That Churchill Downs executives had to talk them into fronting the media at all. That we should have been so lucky to get that 58-second morsel.

“Thank you, sir. May I have another?”

For nearly two years Borden did not answer questions on the record about the Maximum Security controversy, at that point the biggest to hit the Derby in more than 50 years. Tim Sullivan of the Louisville Courier Journal finally convinced her to break her silence last spring.

Until then, “an industry leader in transparent government” let the public twist in the wind. A public that bet more than $50 million on Maximum Security.

But wait. There is more.

Go back another 8 1/2 years. Remember the Breeders’ Cup in 2010? That was when Life At Ten carried 7-2 odds into the gate for the Ladies’ Classic and then strolled out at the bell, never to finish the race. Jockey John Velázquez was heard telling an international TV audience beforehand that the filly “was not warming up like she normally does.”

Life At Ten should have been scratched. But she wasn’t. We should have gotten a thorough explanation that night from Kentucky stewards. But we didn’t.

To its credit, the KHRC actually conducted an investigation of this mess. The man who ran it even put out a 31-page report. It may have been 13 months after the race, but there it was. At least there was something for the public to see.

At the same time the KHRC let it be known it did not cotton to this public display of self-flagellation. According to Bill Finley, who reported at the time for ESPN, “the commission wants to weigh whether or not jockeys should be allowed to talk to television reporters so close to the race.”

There is your “industry leader in transparent government” doing its duty.

The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission had a budget of $44,246,900 last fiscal year and a recommendation of $45,268,700 for this one, according to the governor’s budget report for 2021-22. In the abstract that means everyone who lives in the commonwealth contributes an average of $10 to pay for it.

For $10, the average Kentucky citizen was entitled to know what the stewards said to each other when they decided to take down Maximum Security nearly three years ago. The same citizen is entitled to know now what those same stewards said to Baffert and his lawyers this week.

If Mr. Rabinowitz and his 22 fellow commissioners really are “committed to transparency,” why wait? First, admit out loud that Monday’s hearing about the late Medina Spirit really happened. Second, since it was a Zoom meeting, how difficult could it be to release a recording of it? It would cost next to nothing and can be done in the twinkle of an eye.

Someone with knowledge of the hearing itself apologized this week for being so coy about it. The contrition was as much a confessional.

“I did not want to get anyone in trouble,” was the explanation.

Which brings me to one more thing for the KHRC to put on its to-do list. Stop trying to kill the messenger. Let your stewards and your spokesperson speak and do their work in public.

That is where “an industry leader in transparent government” belongs.