by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Because it could not legally stop the establishment of a historical horse racing facility within its boundaries, Henrico County is asking the General Assembly to change the rules.

This issue was covered before in Bacon’s Rebellion. In summary, Henrico voters approved the establishment of off-track-betting facilities in the county. In 2018, the General Assembly approved the establishment of historical horse racing (HHR) facilities. After HHR was approved, the Rosie’s Gaming Emporium company approached Henrico officials about locating a HHR facility in the county. The Rosie’s officials promised that they would not locate in an area not agreeable to the county. Over several years, Rosie’s suggested several locations, all of which the county objected to. The county finally gave Rosie’s a list of sites it would approve, but one of those that Rosie’s felt would be suitable did not work out in the end due to lack of surface parking. In 2023, Rosie’s, under new ownership, Churchill Downs, acquired a large empty space in a shopping center in the county and announced that it would locate a HHR facility in that space. The zoning for the shopping center allowed, by right, such use.

Alarmed that the new owners were no longer abiding by the assurances of the former owner, county officials set in motion the steps needed to change the zoning ordinance so as to require any HHR or similar operation to acquire a provisional use permit. Rosie’s won the race to the courthouse and filed its plans before the Board of Supervisors could meet to enact the amendment to the ordinance.

Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg D-Henrico, has introduced legislation (SB 1223) to punish Rosie’s and change the rules. The bill would apply only to Henrico and would cut by more than half the amount of the wagering pool a HHR facility could keep if it had not been approved in a referendum held after July 1, 2018. According to the Henrico Citizen, these provisions could cost Rosie’s $17 million, or perhaps more, annually.

VanValkenburg cited two justifications for the bill. The first dealt with allowing the citizens to voice their opinion: “This bill is seeking to incentivize the public approval process. One of the tenets that we have around gaming and casinos [in Virginia] is that we do referendums so that. . . we see if the public supports it.” For his second justification he cited the unanimous, bipartisan support of the Board of Supervisors and the Henrico delegation to the General Assembly.

My Soapbox

I generally don’t support state-sanctioned gambling (I voted against the State Lottery many years ago). Furthermore, I am not happy about the site being developed by Rosie’s for a historical horse racing emporium; it is in my general neighborhood. With that being said, I don’t think it is right for the government to change the rules and penalize a company that followed the rules in place at the time.

The bill was reported by the General Laws and Technology Committee and rereferred to the Finance and Appropriations Committee by a vote of 13-1. Of the six Republicans on the committee, five voted for this bill that would penalize a specific business and enhance the ability of the local government to regulate it.

VanValkenburg has used specious and hypocritical arguments to support the bill. In his remarks to the subcommittee, VanValkenburg claimed that the Henrico referendum vote to approve the location of parimutuel facilities in the county was “illegal” and he had asked for an Attorney General’s opinion on the matter. To be fair, in the context of his remarks, by “illegal” he meant that the approval by Henrico voters of parimutuel facilities in 1992 should not be applicable to HHR because those types of facilities did not exist in 1992. That this argument is thin, at best, is demonstrated by the following:

• During the subcommittee discussion of the bill, Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Fredericksburg, asked a county representative if the actions of Rosie’s were legal, i.e. did the company have a legal right to locate a HHR facility at that location. The county representative said that it did.
• Over the past years, the county had given no indication that it thought that HHR facilities could not be located in the county. Indeed, it had provided Rosie’s with a list of sites it thought suitable for HHR and had worked with Rosie’s to locate a facility on one of those sites.
• It is a safe bet that, if the county indeed thought that the 1992 referendum was not binding, it would be in court trying to stop Rosie’s from locating in that particular site.

VanValkenburg claimed that he doesn’t like gambling and had voted against “gray machines and a bunch of stuff.” That has not always been the case. In 2018, when he was in the House of Delegates, he voted in favor of a new type of gambling facility in the Commonwealth—historical horse racing.