The Virginia Racing Commission has attempted to halt a lawsuit that could delay the opening of the state's first racetrack and its accompanying off-track betting system.
The board asked the Richmond Circuit Court yesterday to dismiss a suit filed Dec. 9 by Jim Wilson's Virginia Jockey Club that challenged the panel's decision to award the license to build the track to the Stansley Management Group.
The chosen applicant, Arnold Stansley, plans to build his track, Colonial Downs, halfway between Richmond and Williamsburg and combine it with Maryland's thoroughbred circuit, using horses from Laurel/Pimlico to run at a four-month summer meet. He hopes to have the track open by 1996.
The commission's attorney, Beverly Snukals, said that Wilson filed his appeal too late and that it should not be heard by the court because of the procedural irregularity.
In a statement released yesterday by the commission, the board said "under state law the Virginia Jockey Club was required to bring its challenge within 30 days of the Commission's Oct. 12 decision." Instead, the statement continued, the "suit papers were filed 58 days after the Commission's decision, almost a month late, and therefore the court has no jurisdiction to review the Commission's decision."
However, Lawrence H. Framme III, Wilson's attorney, said he followed proper and timely procedures in the appeal process that are stipulated under the Virginia Administrative Process Act. But the commission contends that VAPA regulations do not apply to actions taken by the racing board.
Framme referred, however, to the minutes of a Dec. 8, 1993 meeting when the commission chairman, John Shenefield, stated that changing regulations in a potential appeals process were not necessary since "everything the Commission desired to achieve was included within the Administrative Process Act or the Code of Virginia."
Framme said that Shenefield has now retracted his own words "and is trying to avoid court scrutiny of the board's actions."
In his suit, Wilson alleges that the board made certain improprieties in granting the license to Stansley.
In yesterday's statement, the board said that its decision was made during a 12-month process, during which the commission reviewed several thousand pages of documents, conducted over 20 public meetings, heard 24 hours of sworn testimony and argument from more than 100 people and visited each of the six proposed sites.
The court could conduct a hearing on the matter as early as the third week of January.