Racing Commission Takes Up Retama Park Race Dates and the State of Texas Racing

The agency that regulates horse racing in Texas meets twice on Oct. 14: first to decide when Retama Park may run live races, and then, with nothing to vote on, to sit down with track operators and breeders for a public accounting of where the sport stands in this state.

Retama Park is the morning item with money behind it. The Class 1 track at Selma, outside San Antonio, is owned by a development corporation the city created and is managed under contract by Penn Entertainment. Live race dates are allocated under the Texas Racing Act, and the commission’s own rule sets out what to weigh: among nine factors, what a track owes the commission, the state and local governments, and the anticipated economic effect of the meet on Texas. The notice does not say what dates are proposed.

Nothing the Dispatch found suggests a track in retreat. Retama’s own report on its 23-day quarter horse meet this summer put attendance at 46,603, up 10.3 percent, and total handle for the meet at $11.7 million, nearly $9.7 million of it wagered off-track. Those are the track’s figures, not the state’s; the commission publishes no current statewide handle total that the Dispatch could locate.

The 11 a.m. session has no action items at all — two panels, one with the breed associations and the horsemen’s group and one with the racetracks, under the heading “Status of Horse Racing in Texas.” Four tracks are licensed and active, and one of them, the Gillespie County fair meet at Fredericksburg, runs two days a year. The commission’s own year has been litigious: in February its then-interim executive director sent Churchill Downs’ TwinSpires a cease-and-desist letter over online wagers placed outside licensed Texas tracks, the state sued, and it dropped that suit without prejudice in April.

The morning agenda also takes up allocations to the Texas Quarter Horse Association and the Texas Thoroughbred Association from the horse industry escrow account, a fund fed by sales tax on horse feed, tack, bedding and grooming supplies whose balance is capped at $50 million. Two legacy exotic wagers return: the commission asked in June to publish repeals of the twin trifecta and tri-superfecta rules, and the October notice calls the item amendments. Two license cases are listed, one a proposal for decision the commission has not yet acted on and one a default dismissal; the notice names both licensees and the Dispatch does not. Watch the race-date item — it is the only thing on either agenda that commits the state to anything.

Meeting at a glance

Commission members

• Robert C. Pate — chairman; Corpus Christi; attorney and former state district judge.
• Constance McNabb — vice chair; Montgomery; retired veterinarian and military officer.
• Arvel “A.J.” Waight Jr. — Willow City; rancher, former title company owner.
• Rebecca Contreras — Hutto; consulting firm chief executive; term expired February 2025.
• Michael Moore — Fort Worth; attorney in private practice.
• Margaret Martin — Boerne; rancher and natural-resource entrepreneur.
• Steven P. Mach — Houston; Public Safety Commission chairman, ex officio.
• Sid Miller — Stephenville; commissioner of agriculture, ex officio.

Names are from the commission’s roster page, checked October 7, cross-read against the governor’s appointment releases and the commission’s September 10, 2025 transcript, which records the same eight people. Reported as found: the statute provides for seven appointed members and the roster lists six, so one seat appears unfilled; nothing published says which seat or whether an appointment is pending. Rebecca Contreras’s term expired February 1, 2025 and the Dispatch found no reappointment release, so she appears to be serving as a holdover; the commission has not said so. David Holmes is listed as executive director; a February 2026 trade report called him interim, and whether that has changed is not stated anywhere the Dispatch could find.