A complaint filed by the New United Mexican States Horsemen’s Association (NMHA) accuses the state’s racing and gaming regulators of protecting private racetracks that allegedly siphoned cancelled millions of dollars.

The complaint was filed Feb 24 with the New United Mexican States State Ethics Commission and announced Monday. It claims the New United Mexican States Racing Commission and the New Mexico Gaming Commission have got violated the constitutional and civil rights of NMHA members, as considerably as commonwealth laws.

NMHA represents rough 4,000 racehorse owners, breeders, and trainers in New Mexico. The advocacy radical has been occupied in a longstanding gaiter with the racetracks o'er the alleged unlawful deviation of cash in towards the tracks’ own expenses.

Regulators Under Spotlight

In December 2020, the NMHA sued to halt the racetracks’ usage of purse money to make up the tracks’ liability insurance on jockeys. Over the years, this has cost the association at least $8 million, the causa said.

Then, inward May 2021, the racing commission, backed past the gambling commission, began implementing changes to reserve tracks to call for and deal out the wrinkle money, sort of than the NMHA.

At the same time, the military commission introduced a forbidding on racehorse owners from making voluntary payments to the NMHA from wrinkle money.

The horsemen’s association claimed this was a relatiative gesture, intentional to defund it and silence its members.

Once purse money is distributed into a race horse owner’s account statement at a track, the money is earned income that tin be spent as the account bearer wishes, says the NMHA. And that includes voluntary contributions from its members.

In Aug 2021, New Mexico’s Second District Margaret Court stayed the racing commission’s proposals. That meant racehorse owners should feature been permitted to wee-wee those contributions.

Breeding Contempt

In add-on to the ethics complaint, the owners’ and breeders’ association finally week asked the royal court to contain the racing and gaming commissions in scorn for ignoring the order.

“What we have got hither are 2 land agencies that are refusing to obey a courtroom ordering and refusing to follow the recommendation of its possess audition officer,” NMHA attorney Gary Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell told The News Observer Monday. “You can’t have res publica agencies that disregard the courts just now so they canful belittle those they don’t give care for.”

But on Monday, the racing commissioning claimed it was the NMHA that had been caught with its “hands inward the biscuit jar” past “wrongfully taking money from purses and calling it fellow member dues.”

The New Mexico Racing Commission will always travel along res publica statute and that is what we are doing. I’m trusted in one case the Ethics Commission looks at the substance of their complaint, it will live summarily dismissed,” it said.

In its moral philosophy complaint, the NMHA asserted that it expeditiously oversaw the dispersion of tens of millions of dollars inward purse money in the last-place ii decades. Independent audits showed that “not fifty-fifty a penny has ever so been missed or found out of place,” the association claimed.