Racing's Safety Bill Is Mostly A Drug-Testing Bill, And The Tracks Pay All Of It

Of that $74,034,117 in gross expenses, $53,574,017 sits in the anti-doping and medication control programme and $3,218,382 in the racetrack safety programme, according to the programme appendices the Authority filed with its budget. Racetrack safety is the smaller of the two figures by a wide margin. It is also the one of the pair that rose: the doping programme is down from $57,436,645 in 2026, while safety goes from $2,973,956 to $3,218,382.

The Commission published the budget in the Federal Register on 10 September 2026, at 91 FR 57597, after the Authority filed it on 3 August. "The Federal Trade Commission is seeking comment on the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority's proposed 2027 budget as submitted to the Commission and published in the Federal Register," the Commission said in its release of the same day. Comments close on 24 September 2026, marked "HISA 2027 Budget, Matter No. P222100", and filed at regulations.gov. Under 16 CFR 1.151 the Commission then approves or disapproves the budget, and it may modify the amount of any line item. The Authority ran its own comment period first, closing on 27 July 2026 with thirteen comments filed, and its board approved the final version unanimously.

Who pays, and what one race start costs

The sport pays the whole of it. The notice puts $72,730,613 on 19 state racing commissions and 41 racetracks, apportioned on starts under the Authority's Rule Series 8500 methodology. Appendix 2 carries that total alongside the figure $449.97, against 161,635 starts recorded between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026, the Breeders' Cup at Del Mar excluded.

Gross expenses fall from $78,551,045 in 2026, the second consecutive year the Authority has proposed a reduction, and it says the gross budget is down approximately 9.50 per cent since 2025. Florida is assessed $9,076,759 on 20,172 starts, Pennsylvania $8,321,712 on 18,494 and New York $8,155,674 on 18,125. Among individual tracks, Gulfstream Park carries $5,985,027 on 13,301 starts and Churchill Downs $3,065,184 on 6,812.

Churchill Downs Incorporated has been the loudest objector on this docket two years running, and the Authority's own filing says so plainly. "For the second straight year, this commenter submitted a comment advancing the misleading proposition that the Authority's per-start fee increased from $285 in 2023 to $450 in 2027," the Authority wrote in its Notice of Filing, reproduced in full in the Federal Register notice. Its answer is that 2023 covered only a partial year of the anti-doping programme, about 70 per cent of the total budget, and that the 2023 figure included more than 37,000 starts from West Virginia and Louisiana. To the company's argument that national starters fell 15 per cent while costs fell less, the Authority answers that the Equibase starts it used fell 8.56 per cent, that inflation for the twelve months to 31 May 2026 was 4.2 per cent, and that it added services.

The numbers the money is meant to move

The Authority's third annual metrics report, published on 24 March 2026, gives the racing-related fatality rate at racetracks under its rules as 1.04 per 1,000 starts in 2025, against 0.90 in 2024. Its chief executive says as much in her own opening message: "In 2024, the racing-related fatality rate (0.90) fell below 1.00 per 1,000 starts for the first full calendar year on record. In 2025, the rate rose modestly to 1.04 per 1,000 starts across HISA's racetracks," Lisa Lazarus wrote. The report calls the increase consistent with expected year-to-year fluctuation and does not attribute it.

Two further numbers belong beside those. The Equine Injury Database reported 1.39 racing-related fatalities per 1,000 starts in 2021, the last full year before the racetrack safety programme began, and 2.00 in 2009, when it started reporting. For 2025 it put United States Thoroughbred tracks operating outside the Authority's rules at 1.21 per 1,000 starts, against the 1.04 it recorded at tracks inside them. Across the 24 months to the end of 2025 the rate under the programme was 0.97, and more than 99.90 per cent of starts were completed without a fatality.

The 2027 safety line buys six full-time staff on $870,768 in salaries, $1,251,138 in professional services, $690,000 of racetrack surface testing and $153,000 of accreditation. New items include an epidemiologist on contract at $85,000, an Equine Associated Sudden Death study at $199,800, and $106,000 for a jockey wellness consultant and a mental-health platform for riders.

Who is out, and what is unsettled

Louisiana and West Virginia appear in neither assessment appendix. "Of note, the States and racetracks located in West Virginia and Louisiana are not included in Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 due to the preliminary injunction issued by the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana preventing implementation of the Authority's rules in Louisiana and West Virginia," the Notice of Filing says. Texas and Nebraska tracks sit outside the programme, and the $1.29 million carried for them in 2026 has been taken out for 2027. The Texas racetracks and Hawthorne are removed from the proposal altogether, which the Authority says raises the per-start fee, because those tracks carry none of the fixed costs. Starts used to set the 2027 assessment fell 8.56 per cent, nearly 60 per cent of that from those removals.

Above all of it sits whether the statute survives at all. Two petitions for certiorari are pending at the Supreme Court and neither has been granted: No. 26-201, brought by the Commission against the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association out of the Fifth Circuit, docketed on 17 August 2026; and No. 25-1325, Oklahoma and others against the United States, out of the Sixth Circuit, distributed for the conference of 9 October 2026 and then rescheduled. The Authority tells the Commission that if a decision comes in the 2027 term, the Louisiana and West Virginia injunction is likely to be dissolved, which would cut the per-start fee nationally.

The dollar figures above come from the appendices the Authority posted on its own site on 17 July 2026, marked draft. The final appendices were filed only on the Commission's docket, as document FTC-2026-1288-0002, and that portal refused access for this piece. The Federal Register notice states that the final filing is $14,000 higher in gross terms and nearly $459,000 higher net, the latter because credits fell after the anti-doping unit took over sample collection at Delaware Park. Every line item that appears in both the draft and the published notice matches exactly, and the three items changed after the draft were in Veterinary Services and Administration.

Three other things are unsettled. The Commission has not recorded a vote to approve or disapprove. Nebraska is named as not participating but is given no legal or procedural explanation anywhere in the filing. And the comment window, the one part of this a reader can still act on, closes on 24 September 2026.