LEXINGTON, Ky. – Steve Beshear, the former governor of Kentucky, and several racing-industry stalwarts have been selected to be board members of the nascent Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, the organization announced on Wednesday. Beshear, whose son Andy is the current governor of Kentucky, was one of nine people named to the board of directors, which is comprised of five members with no direct connection to racing and four members who have some racing experience. The board is expected to name a chairman at its first meeting, the organization said. The other four independent directors include Len Coleman, the former president of the National League of Major League Baseball, who was also a member of the nominating committee; Adolpho Birch, who is the former senior vice president and chief legal officer for the Tennessee Titans; Ellen McClain, the chief financial officer for Year Up who was an executive at the New York Racing Association from 2009-2013; and Charles Scheeler, a retired attorney who was the lead counsel former Sen. George Mitchell when Mitchell launched an investigation into performance-enhancing substances in Major League Baseball. The four industry board members are Joseph De Francis, the former owner of the Maryland Jockey Club; Dr. Susan Stover, a professor of surgical and radiological science at the University of California-Davis, who is considered an authority on lameness and racetrack injuries; Bill Thomason, the former president of Keeneland Association who retired last year; and D.G. Van Clief, the former president of Breeders’ Cup. The board was selected by a nominating committee led by Coleman and Dr. Nancy Cox, the dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment. The nominating committee also selected the members of the authority’s two standing committees, one of which will deal with medication and the other with safety issues. The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority was created late last year with the passage of federal legislation. Under the enabling bill, the authority will be a non-profit, private company overseen by the Federal Trade Commission, and it will have the power to raise funds from racing constituents in U.S. states. It is envisioned as a rule-making body that will enforce those regulations while also overseeing a national drug-testing program, run by the United States Anti-Doping Authority, another private, non-profit company. While supported by a broad range of racing constituents, the legislation establishing the authority has been targeted in two lawsuits filed in the past month challenging its constitutionality. Supporters of the effort have filed a motion to dismiss the first of the lawsuits, which was filed by the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association and a number of its state affiliates. The other was filed by the states of Oklahoma and West Virginia, along with their racing commissions, a number of Oklahoma racetrack owners, and several organizations representing Standardbred and Quarter Horse organizations. Under the legislation, the authority will have an effective date of July 1, 2022, and the board and its committees are soon expected to begin the somewhat arduous task of reviewing the patchwork of rules and regulations already in place in U.S. states in an attempt to forge a consensus on which rules should serve as those regulating the entire U.S. racing industry. The authority will also have to work out the structure and parameters of the national drug-testing program. Most critically, the authority will need to determine how to apply funding formulas to the various U.S. racing states in order to pay for its long-term operations. The authority has already taken out loans from various racing supporters to fund its initial operations, according to racing officials. The funding aspect of the authority was left deliberately vague in the legislation because of the complexity of the task. The two standing committees are expected to do the heavy lifting in determining which rules to forward to the full board for approval. Each standing committee has seven members, four of which are independent and three of which can have racing industry ties, and the chair of each committee was named from the full board. Birch, who, prior to his work with the Tennessee Titans, spent 23 years in the NFL head office with responsibilities that included the administration and enforcement of the league’s integrity issues, was named the chair of the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Standing Committee. The independent members of the committee are Jeff Novitzky, a former federal agent for the Food and Drug Administration and the current vice president of athlete health and performance for the Ultimate Fighting Championship (which uses USADA for its drug-testing program); Kathleen Stroia, the senior vice president of sport sciences and medicine and transitions for the Women’s Tennis Association; and Jerry Yon, a former member of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission and a past chair of an adjunct to the commission, the Equine Drug Research Council. The racing-industry members of the Anti-Doping and Medication Control committee are Jeff Blea, an equine practitioner who will become the equine medical director for the California Horse Racing Board later this year; Dr. Mary Scollay, the former equine medical director for the KHRC who is currently the executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, an industry-funded group that develops and recommends model rules and policies for racing commissions; and Dr. Scott Stanley, the director of the University of Kentucky Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory. The Racing Safety Standing Committee will be chaired by Stover. The independent members of the committee are Lisa Fortier, the James Law Professor of Surgery at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine whose specialties include equine orthropedic surgery; Peter Hester, a former equine veterinary surgeon at the William Reed clinic at Belmont Park in New York; Paul Lunn, the dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University; and Carl Mattacola, the dean of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro School of Health and Human Sciences. In addition to Stover, the racing-industry members of the committee are Glen Kozak, the senior vice president of operations and capital projects for the New York Racing Association, who is responsible for the association’s racing surfaces; and John Velazquez, the Hall of Fame jockey who just last weekend won both the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby.