Accountability, consistency, and transparency are critical to the United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) successfully achieving our mission to provide access to and increase participation in equestrian sports at all levels by ensuring fairness, safety, and enjoyment.
Over the past few years, we have heard our members ask the USEF to step up and implement a fair, consistent, and responsible process to evaluate USEF-licensed competitions and to make certain that USEF staff and volunteers comply with our internal policies and procedures that support the administration of numerous programs and departments. The continued frustrations of our members and staff regarding these issues were identified during our recent strategic planning process and resulted in a series of recommendations for consideration by the Board of Directors.
At the USEF Mid-Year Meeting, the Board approved the following Strategic Plan recommendations designed to help take our organization into the future. The plan calls for the creation of a Compliance Department, which will mainly focus on competition evaluations and standards compliance, investigating incidents at licensed competitions, and overseeing compliance with USEF internal policies and procedures.
We have recently appointed Matt Fine as the new Chief Compliance Officer, and Matt is currently developing the programs, policies, and procedures to support the responsibilities of this department. He is also working on the position descriptions for additional employees to assist with competition evaluations and incident investigation.
This fall, we will begin sending USEF-employed compliance representatives to competitions for the purpose of evaluating the competition and reporting back to the Compliance Department on those visits. Evaluators will have full access to competition grounds, will evaluate competitions compared to USEF competition standards as outlined in the rulebook, and will engage competitors in discussions regarding compliance with those standards.
During year one, the USEF will focus on providing constructive and collaborative feedback to organizers based on the results of inspections. Enforcement actions for non-compliance will not begin until January 2018, unless the issues jeopardize the welfare and safety of horses and humans.
As the department evolves and the programs become fully developed, more information will be available and shared with you.
If you have any questions, please contact Matt Fine at [email protected].
Sincerely,
William J. Moroney, CEO
United States Equestrian Federation, Inc.