While HISA Questions Went Unanswered, Its CEO Took a Second Job
Past The Wire published eleven questions for the HISA Town Hall — document-grounded, submitted publicly in advance, and available at pastthewire.com for any stakeholder to read. We received no answers from HISA before publication, and we expected none. That’s become the pattern.
Now there is a twelfth question. And this one goes to the board.
What the Record Shows
The Premier Jumping League — a newly launched global showjumping venture backed by McCourt Global and its executive chairman Frank McCourt — published its leadership team in late March 2026. The list includes a Chief Equestrian Advisor.
Her name is Lisa Lazarus.
The same Lisa Lazarus who serves as CEO of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority.
This is not a rumor, not a secondhand account, and not subject to interpretation. It is on the PJL’s official leadership page, at pjl.com/leadership, as of the date of this publication. Her own bio on that page confirms the dual role explicitly, stating that she will continue as CEO of HISA alongside her advisory position with the league.
The chief regulator of American Thoroughbred racing holds a formal advisory role at a newly launched commercial equestrian venture — and HISA has said nothing.
The PJL is not a casual side project. It is a professionally organized commercial league, structured around team ownership, global media rights, sponsorship, and prize money at scale. It is scheduled to launch in March 2027. It is happening now.
And the CEO of HISA is part of it.
The Governance Question Is Precise
We want to be clear about what we are and are not saying.
We are not saying Lisa Lazarus has done anything wrong as a matter of personal ethics. We are not attacking the Premier Jumping League, which is an entirely separate sport enterprise. We have no interest in manufactured outrage.
What we are saying is this: HISA is a federal quasi-regulatory body. It was created by statute — the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act — to serve as an independent authority over medication and safety standards in U.S. Thoroughbred racing. The word “independent” is not decorative. It is the legal and institutional premise on which HISA’s entire authority rests.
Federal quasi-regulators — whether formally or practically structured — operate under conflict-of-interest standards that are more exacting than private employment, not less. The governing documents of any credible regulatory institution include provisions requiring disclosure and board approval before the chief executive takes on compensated outside roles, particularly in adjacent industries.
The questions are therefore not about character. They are structural and they go to the board:
- Did the HISA board vote to authorize this role?
- When was the board informed — before or after the PJL announced it publicly?
- Is Ms. Lazarus being compensated by the PJL, and if so, in what form and amount?
- What conflict-of-interest review, if any, was conducted?
- Were the industry stakeholders who fund HISA through assessments informed of this arrangement?
- Were federal regulators or oversight bodies, including the FTC, notified?
These are not hostile questions. They are the questions any functioning board of an independent regulatory authority would have already answered internally — and disclosed externally — before this story could have been written by anyone.
The fact that they require asking at all is itself informative.
This Does Not Exist in Isolation
Past The Wire has spent more than two years building a documented record of questions about HISA’s structural independence. The Jockey Club loan. The Breeders’ Cup loan. The sealed Churchill Downs settlement. The pattern, in each case, has been the same: a regulated entity with financial or institutional interests in the outcome of HISA’s regulatory decisions has had a relationship with HISA that was not proactively disclosed. Each time, the disclosure came because someone outside the institution looked for it.
The PJL situation follows the pattern. It was not disclosed by HISA. It was found on a public website.
We have said consistently that we do not oppose HISA’s existence. Federal oversight of medication and safety standards in American racing was necessary. What we have questioned — and continue to question — is whether the institution being built to deliver that oversight is structurally independent enough to deliver it honestly.
An independent regulator’s first obligation is to the credibility of the institution, not the career of its CEO. Those are not always the same thing.
What We Are Asking
We are submitting this as a formal public question to the HISA board, in advance of the April 21 Town Hall, to be answered on the record:
Did the HISA Board of Directors vote to authorize the CEO’s role as Chief Equestrian Advisor to the Premier Jumping League? When did the board learn of this arrangement, and why was it not disclosed to the industry?
If the Town Hall proceeds on April 21 without addressing this question, the industry will have its answer — not from what is said, but from what is not.
We will be there either way.
