Paper chase slows Scott hearing Harness racing panel begins review of bid for Bangor Raceway license

AUGUSTA – For developer Shawn Scott, nearly two years of effort to bring a racino to Bangor boils down to convincing the Maine Harness Racing Commission that he is worthy of being licensed to run a track.

On Tuesday, the commission began its hearings on Scott’s track record.

Scott needs a state harness racing license to carry out his $30 million plan to turn Bangor Raceway into a racetrack casino featuring slot machines.

The hearings, which resume at 9 a.m. today at the Augusta Civic Center, are expected to span several days and to involve testimony from numerous witness.

By the end of the day Tuesday, the commission had heard opening arguments and testimony from only one witness. That was due in part to the document-management hell those involved found themselves in. A great deal of time in the afternoon was eaten up as attorneys and officials searched for passages contained in some of the thousands of unnumbered pages of documents gathered during the state’s probe of Scott and his associates past business dealings.

During his opening argument, Assistant Attorney General John Richards promised the five members of the commission that they would hear about Scott’s failed attempts to obtain racing and gaming licenses in Nevada, Louisiana and New York. Among the issues he outlined Tuesday were a series of liens and lawsuits filed against Scott and his companies in other states. He described Maine’s “ongoing battle” to get Scott and his associates to cooperate with the state-mandated suitability investigation.

Augusta attorney Stephen Langsdorf, a member of Scott’s legal team, came out swinging, taking aim at a report addressing Scott’s suitability to hold a state harness racing license. He denounced the report and the investigation upon which it was based as “biased, incomplete and unfair.”

“This report will not stand up to scrutiny,” Langsdorf said. He further alleged that the state had not conducted a “real” investigation but rather had merely reviewed documents obtained from other states in which Scott has done business, namely South Carolina, Nevada and New York.

He also complained that Henry Jackson, executive director of the harness racing commission, intentionally excluded information that would have worked in Scott’s favor, including the fact that a background check had failed to turn up any past criminal activity on Scott’s part.

Jackson acknowledged that the background check was removed from a draft of the report “because we found the information was incorrect.”

A harness racing license application from Bangor Historic Track, which operates Bangor Raceway, is among the matters the five-member state commission will address this week.

The city-owned raceway is the subject of a $30 million development deal between the city and Scott’s company, Capital Seven LLC. Capital Seven holds a controlling interest in Bangor Historic Track, which operated in 2003 with a conditional license pending the outcome of a state background investigation. The first few days of the hearing will address Scott’s 2003 license, though only two weeks remain in this licensing year.

Scott plans to develop a racetrack casino, also known as a racino, at the city’s historic half-mile dirt oval. His contract with the city calls for an entertainment complex that will combine harness racing with year-round entertainment featuring up to 1,500 slot machines, among other things.

Scott already has mounted a successful statewide campaign in which voters granted approval on Nov. 4 for slots at Bangor Raceway and Scarborough Downs, Maine’s two commercial harness racing tracks. He also won local approval for slots at Bass Park in June. Renovations are under way at the Bangor track’s grandstand, which is being converted into a slots parlor that would accommodate the first 250 slot machines Capital Seven plans to install.

With a development agreement with the city in hand, Scott’s only apparent remaining hurdle is a state license.

During his testimony, Jackson said Scott owned more than 100 limited liability corporations, 38 of which Scott agreed had a direct or indirect relationship to his Bangor project. Jackson also said that he’d outlined 37 lawsuits he believed involved Scott to show a pattern of “repetitive litigation.”

In response to Langsdorf’s questions, however, Jackson acknowledged that some of the cases he referenced dated back two years or more and that there had been little follow-up on their status due to lack of time. He said his intention was to provide the commission with the information and let them determine its relevance to the license application.

Langsdorf questioned the relevance of several of the cases, some of which occurred before or after Scott’s involvement with the parties that were sued. He also debated the decision to list in the report a “slip and fall suit,” which he argued addressed none of the licensing criteria, as well as two property condemnation cases having to do with a Nevada highway widening project.