NOTES : Sherman Named OTB President

After more than 11 months of deliberation, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani Thursday announced the mildly surprising appointment of Allie Sherman as president of the New York City Off-Track Betting Corp.

Sherman, 72, leaves a position as vice president and senior adviser to Time-Warner Communications, but is best known as the New York Giants coach from 1961-69 and more recently an ESPN football analyst. He is now head of the financially beleaguered, labor-fat, patronage-larded public-benefit corporation, which has suffered mounting losses in recent years.

Sherman, twice the NFL Coach of the Year while with the Giants, launched Time-Warner’s first pay-per-view and sports programming efforts and, according to Giuliani’s office, was charged with creating alliances between cable operators, program providers, advertisers and the public. This is valuable expertise for the next NYC-OTB head, who will lead the corporation into its first joint venture with the New York Racing Association as plans for in-home simulcasting begin to take shape.

Robert Polumbo, acting president since Hazel Dukes and much of her staff left office after Giuliani’s election last year, will remain as executive vice president.

Beyond the appointment of a new board, NYC-OTB has undergone no meaningful change in structure during the first year of Giuliani’s administration, and a recent cost-cutting move to close unprofitable branches on Sundays was beaten back by labor unions.

Awaiting Sherman is the task of streamlining a middle-management-bloated work force, cutting costs and dealing with the question of a possible merger with the New York Racing Association or sale. A study of those questions commissioned by Gov. Mario Cuomo in August is expected to be completed by the firm Bear-Stearns early next year.

“The city’s OTB will be exploring opportunities for privatization,” Giuliani said in a statement announcing Sherman’s appointment. “But it is also necessary to secure that revenue and collection are protected and improved.”

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In a preemptive measure to shore up the winter meeting, NYRA made the five-day racing week official Thursday.

The new schedule, with Mondays and Tuesdays dark, begins Dec. 5. There will be holiday-related alterations to the schedule to allow for racing on Mondays, the first of those on Jan. 2, and racing will be conducted on Christmas Eve, which originally was scheduled as a dark day.

The five-day racing week, a response to the shortage of horses that has plagued racing here in recent years, is set for the winter and spring meetings at Aqueduct, but serious consideration is being given to its extension to the spring and autumn meetings at Belmont Park.

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Gambling legislation in several forms met with pronounced voter disapproval on several fronts in referendums held Tuesday that were directly related to the futures of racing interests.

Florida voters resoundingly defeated a measure that would have allowed casinos at 47 sites, including racetracks and jai-alai frontons. Casino measures also were voted down in Massachusetts, Ohio and Colorado.

In Minnesota, voters responding to the question were split, 50-50, on a Canterbury Downs-backed proposal to establish off-track wagering, but since unmarked votes are counted as negative responses, the measure was defeated.

Officials of Charles Town announced that the track would apply for no 1995 racing dates and is for sale after West Virginia voters disapproved a proposal that would have allowed video gambling terminals at the track.