Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the Horseracing Safety and Integrity Authority’s (HISA) $80 million budget last week. Created in 2020 to regulate safety in professional horse racing, HISA is a classic example of wasteful government spending and should be a prime target for the future Department for Government Efficiency.

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act 2020which passed with bipartisan support, created and charged HISA to develop and oversee anti-doping, drug control, and racetrack safety programs under FTC oversight. While the FTC claims that HISA “serves the goals of the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act in a prudent and cost-effective manner,” the agency’s budget says otherwise.

The lion’s share of the authority is approved budget 2025 is not allocated to racetrack safety ($3 million) or equine veterinary services ($916,000), both of which should be privately insured and provided respectively, but to the $58.6 million budget for anti-doping and drug control. The budget primarily covers sample collection and testing costs “for post-race, out-of-competition and TCO2 (total carbon dioxide) testing”, which the authority outsources to Horse Racing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU), a division of Sport International without drugsa full service provider of anti-doping services.

In 2025, the HISA will pay 6.7 million dollars to cover the salaries of 36 full-time HIWU staff working exclusively for the authority. Additional expenses include $1 million for travel, $7 million for technology, supplies and professional services, and $2.8 million for so-called management fees, described as “the value of the profit to HIWU for administering the program . . . a negotiated amount of 8% of total expenditure incurred on services that HIWU provides directly and 4% on everything else.”

HISA allocates 2.4 million dollars to compensate the nine administrative department employees, whose salaries are “based on market rates.” HISA’s 2025 budget also calls for $420,000 for professional public relations services and $100,000 for “a white paper on the benefits of security cameras in barns” — the walkway between rows of stalls in a barn .

The safety of horse racing, the health of the horses and the fairness of competitions are all important goals – for the small segment of the population that owns and competes thoroughbreds. An affluent demographic that neither needs nor is entitled to tens of millions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies.

There is nothing prudent about $80 million a year in public funding to regulate a niche sport that is perfectly capable of governing itself. The Department of Government Efficiency should instruct the FTC to be more circumspect in approving funding for the Horse Racing Safety and Integrity Authority while the agency is still in existence.