Flatter: Meet the CEO in charge of federal racing regulation

Lisa Lazarus is the boss. And the rookie. That is what happens when you have been on the job 32 days as the CEO of a company of one. 

“As of today I’m the only HISA employee that exists,” she said during a Zoom call we had Thursday morning. “We have consultants that we’re working with, and I’m trying to build a team now. If you consider how lean we are from a staff standpoint, I think we’ve actually done a really good job of trying to be transparent and engaged with the public.”

I can see the eyerolls now. Transparent? Engaged?

HISA, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, literally has become a four-letter word for the likes of Eric Hamelback of the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association and Russell Williams from the U.S. Trotting Association. They have been the loudest voices of dissent in lawsuits trying to stop HISA from starting this summer.

“Lack of transparency, fear of unknown costs, lack of expertise in writing the rules certainly give us a lot of cause for uncertainty,” Hamelback said this month at the NHBPA conference in Arkansas. “We want transparency. Is that off base?”

“HISA remains at a standstill,” Williams said in a written statement in December. “Even though the state racing commissions submitted detailed budget information almost a year ago, the industry is still without a clue about HISA’s cost or funding.”

Enter Lazarus.

Hometown: Montréal. Granddaughter of a Canadian horseman. Ivy League-educated at Penn. Law degree from Fordham. A career sports attorney who has lived and worked on three continents. A résumé that includes 10 years with the NFL, six years with International Equestrian Federation and four years in private practice at a sports-law firm where she specialized in horse issues.

Now this.

Based in New York, Lazarus is the face of the new authority in a sport that badly needs regulation. But government regulation? Welcome to a whole universe that’s in a hot, dense state.

“I've been working for regulators for most of my career, and nobody ever likes the regulator,” she said. “It’s impossible to make everyone happy.”

Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. Although no doubt handsomely paid and with no one forcing her to do it, Lazarus took on a job with some headaches left behind two winters ago by the lame ducks on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

After collecting dust for more than five years, the HISA proposal got a booster shot during the worst of the pandemic. Party leader Mitch McConnell put his power behind it and rounded up bipartisan support before he and his fellow Republicans lost control of the Senate. HISA was part of the pile of throw-ins to the $900 billion COVID-relief and spending bill that was signed into law 24 days before President Trump left the White House.

Not one of those dollars was, as they say in Washington, earmarked for HISA. Without a budget and with a hodgepodge of deadlines baked in, it became an unfunded mandate with an 18-month countdown until it was scheduled to explode on horse racing. It might as well have had a Post-it Note that said, “Here. You fix it.”

Not that Lazarus was complaining. In my half-hour conversation that came with the condition that it was “on background for your written piece only,” Lazarus never reached for any handy excuse. The closest she came was to call the Congressional timelines “incredibly aggressive” and to say, “We didn’t write the act. We’ve only been asked to implement it.”

So rather than gripe about it, Lazarus sounded confident putting one foot in front of the other to address the biggest concerns.

The highlights:

* Talks that broke off in December to enlist the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to be HISA’s drug enforcer may not be dead. “I believe talks with USADA could be resurrected,” she said. “We haven’t entirely closed the door.” Lazarus also suggested the U.S. Equestrian Federation and her former colleagues at the International Equestrian Federation could offer alternative drug-testing programs that do for horses “what USADA does for humans. They certainly have the expertise in equine anti-doping.”

* Lazarus confirmed HISA drug testing will not begin before next Jan. 1. The breakdown of negotiations with USADA meant “there won’t be any out-of-competition testing program in 2022. We still plan to have a testing program in 2023 with either USADA or a different testing agency.”

* Lazarus said the absence of a drug enforcer will not prevent a funding mechanism from being in place in two weeks. That was the deadline written into the HISA law. “The racing states have to pay for it,” she said. “By April 1 we’re going to provide the budget for HISA’s costs for 2022 to the states.” A complicated budget formula based on each state’s volume of racing activity and purse money was submitted in December for Federal Trade Commission approval. Although there are nuances, it essentially caps any state’s contribution at 10 percent of its total purses.

* Even though two federal lawsuits are grinding their way through the court system, Lazarus believes they will not keep HISA from starting on time July 1. “I’m quite confident,” she said. “Our constitutional law expert feels strong from a legal position, so I trust him.”

Taking her words on face value, Lazarus is like the sprinter who wins a debut race by open lengths. Impressive, yes, but also untested.

She may have plans A, B and C, but there is still no deal to execute drug enforcement. That and track safety were the two cornerstones of HISA. Without a drug plan, there can be no accurate budget beyond Dec. 31. And without that, our impressive, debut-winning sprinter suddenly has to get the classic distance. What would that morning line look like?

HISA’s track-safety program was given the green light this month by the FTC, which offered only a perfunctory endorsement of the plan. The idea that it might be unconstitutional was dotted with pock marks from the 10-foot poles with which the FTC was trying to avoid it.

At the same time, Lazarus offered the same warning that HISA’s backers have used in supporting the concept if not the letter of the plan, especially in juxtaposition with the federal drug case against trainers Jorge Navarro and Jason Servis and with the Kentucky Derby disqualification of the late Medina Spirit.

“It’s like we’re getting one last chance to get it right and fix things,” she said. “My biggest allies are the people who have spent their entire lives in the sport.”

But what a mess.

So what’s a nice lawyer like Lazarus doing in a place that must make NFL player negotiations and Olympic drug controversies look like a wading pool compared with the deep, treacherous waters of horse racing?

“It’s part of why the challenge appeals to me,” she said. “It’s a bit deeper because the structure isn’t there. I’m the CEO of HISA. That’s fantastic. But HISA doesn’t really exist yet. We’ve got to build it, you know?”