The California Horse Racing Board’s (CHRB) equine medical director would be restricted to serving no more than two two-year terms consecutively under a state Assembly bill currently before a legislative committee.

Assemblyman Adam Gray, a freshman Democrat from Merced County, authored the measure, AB 1154. It would remove the CHRB’s current equine medical director, Rick Arthur, DVM, from his $308,800 position by Jan. 1, 2018. Arthur, a successful racetrack veterinarian for more than 30 years before dropping his private practice, has been in his current job since being selected in May 2006 during the CHRB chairmanship of Richard Shapiro.

During a May 8 meeting of the Assemby’s appropriation committee, the bill was moved to the suspense file and scheduled for a May 24 vote. Should it pass there, it would advance to the Assembly floor.

The bill’s author is a former aide to Dennis Cardoza, a member of the Thoroughbred Owners of California (TOC) board of directors and retired five-term congressman. Gray worked with Cardoza when Cardoza was a member of the Assembly