Casino industry leaders bracing for visit from gaming panel

Monday, Nov. 9, 1998 | 10:51 a.m.

A stormy year of traveling across the country comes to an end this week in Las Vegas for the National Gambling Impact Study Commission.

Just as it began its nationwide tour in Atlantic City in January, the nine-member panel once more finds itself mired in controversy.

Casino industry leaders, as they did in Atlantic City, have complained that the agenda for the two-day hearing, which gets underway at the MGM Grand hotel-casino Tuesday, appears weighted with witnesses critical of the industry.

"I think the commission has lived up to all of our very low expectations," said Jim Mulhall, vice president of governmental relations for the Nevada Resort Association. "The agenda is clearly designed to put the industry and this community in the worst possible light."

This comes as the industry has worked hard to show that it's serious about reaching out to problem gamblers, a subject that has attracted much interest from the commission during its travels around the country.

Much of the gaming industry's uneasiness about the commission stems from its chairwoman, Kay James, a 49-year-old administrator at Pat Robertson's Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. James has not voiced an opinion on the merits of gambling, but she is considered a rising star in the Christian right, which is pushing an anti-gambling agenda. She also is close to Commissioner James Dobson, a conservative radio talk show host who is regarded as one of the most influential forces in the religious right. Dobson has been gaming's biggest critic on the panel.

James did not make herself available for an interview, but she has insisted she has gone out of her way to be fair to the industry, as the commission has carried out its mandate from Congress to examine gambling's impact on the nation. The panel, expected to file its report in June, was given $5 million and two years to complete its work.

For the most part, James has appeared even-handed during the previous meetings in Atlantic City, Boston, Chicago, San Diego and New Orleans this year.

It has drawn her praise from the industry's leading spokesman, Frank Fahrenkopf, of the Washington-based American Gaming Association.

"After a rocky start, Chair James has in my opinion been extremely fair in attempting to hear from all sides at commission meetings throughout the country," Fahrenkopf said.

But in the commission's early days in 1997, James was hammered by criticism.

Her first choice to serve as executive director of the panel was a Virginia crony who turned out to have voiced an opinion against legalized gambling. The choice was shot down.

Las Vegas, regarded as gaming's biggest success story, wasn't even on the chairwoman's original list of site visits. She later bowed to pressure and agreed to back a Las Vegas trip.

In August 1997, Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., was so upset with the way James was conducting the meetings, he accused her of using the commission to further the Christian Coalition's anti-gaming agenda.

"We have a chairwoman who has run amok," Bryan charged. "Her arrogance and abuse of power are so great that my only hope is that she may be overplaying her hand."

James countered that Bryan was playing politics with the commission.

Just last month, Bryan expressed concern that James seemed to be allowing the commission to violate the federal open meetings law. He asked the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to take a look at the commission.

James didn't settle on an executive director to run the commission's daily operations until last November. She chose veteran Washington bureaucrat Nancy Mohr Kennedy, who quickly earned the respect of commissioners on both sides of the gaming issue.

But Kennedy only lasted eight months on the job. She abruptly quit last June for what James described as "personal reasons." Kennedy remained silent about her resignation, but there was much speculation at the time that she had a falling out with James over her unwillingness to toe the anti-gaming line. There also was talk that Regent University colleagues of James were exerting too much influence over the commission's activities.

Two other key staffers followed Kennedy out the door, which stirred up rumblings that the anti-gaming forces were tightening their hold on the panel that includes three commissioners aligned with the casino industry.

Lately concerns about the commission have focused on Timothy Kelly, a James ally who succeeded Kennedy as executive director.

"The feeling is that Kelly is biased against the industry," one well-placed casino source said. "Everyone thinks that he's a tool of the anti-gaming forces."

Kelly gave the industry reason to cry foul last month when he put together a draft agenda that stacked the deck against Las Vegas.

There were panels on such potentially embarrassing issues as neighborhood gambling, youth gambling, casino credit practices and sports betting. But almost unbelievably, there was no time set aside to take a look at Nevada's world-renowned regulatory system and how gaming has turned Las Vegas into one the nation's fastest growing and most prosperous metropolitan areas.

Through pressure from Gov. Bob Miller, who created a 54-member committee to help prepare for this week's visit, and Commissioner John Wilhelm, the international president of the Culinary Union, panels on both subjects were added to the agenda.

But even then, Kelly, who did not return phone calls, placed an unusually heavy emphasis on inviting speakers to those panels who are known to be critical of the industry.

"You've got some people who want to embarrass Nevada," Fahrenkopf said. "The critics are getting a little more attention then they deserve, a little more of the spotlight than they deserve."

Last week, Miller said he hoped that one of those detractors, longtime state Sen. Joe Neal, D-North Las Vegas, would be thoughtful in his comments to the commission on Tuesday.

Neal, who believes in limiting gaming's role in politics, was pushed as a witness by forces siding with the Rev. Tom Grey, the executive director of the Illinois-based National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.

Grey, who plans to be in Las Vegas this week, said the agenda looks balanced to him.

"This was set up so both sides could be expressed," he said. "It gives both viewpoints a chance to draw out information."

Grey said he's not impressed with what he calls "the whining" from the casino industry.

"They've been whining from the beginning," he said. "Why wouldn't they whine now. If our people aren't credible, they have a perfect right to tear them apart."

Grey said he found it interesting that the pro-gambling members of the commission -- Wilhelm, former Gaming Control Board Chairman Bill Bible and MGM Grand Inc. Chairman Terry Lanni -- aren't publicly complaining about the agenda.

Bible said he wasn't "overly concerned" about the makeup of the panels.

"A number of the witnesses are people who have viewpoints that have generally been discredited and don't represent mainstream thinking," he said. "I certainly can separate the credible testimony from the testimony that is suspect."

Bible added: "I do think it's unfortunate that some of these people have been given a position on the panels, when there are many others who have more important and relevant testimony to provide."

Grey, meanwhile, said he fully expects the industry will be able to get its message out.

"It's their town," he said. "They're going to get a chance to show it off."

That won't happen without the help of the Culinary Union, which showed up en masse in Atlantic City and in San Diego.

The Culinary Union, which represents casino industry workers, is expecting hundreds of its members to turn out this week. They'll be easily spotted wearing lime green t-shirts.

Union members likely will dominate the hour-long public comment portion of the meeting Tuesday. Of the 20 witnesses who signed up to speak, 19 are from the union.

Two Culinary Union members, including newly elected state Sen. Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, also will participate on the employment panel with Neal.

"I think we'll have a very representative group that will get the message across that we're interested in our jobs," said Culinary Staff Director D. Taylor. "We want to make sure the commission hears all aspects of the casino industry, and we think we have a good story to tell."

The casino industry and its regulators this week also will have significant representation during the hearing. Among those slated to testify are Gaming Control Board Chairman Steve DuCharme and Nevada Gaming Commission Chairman Bill Curran. A host of other gaming officials, as well as Gov. Miller and Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones, also are scheduled to address the commission. So will all four members of Nevada's congressional delegation.

Miller is hosting a dinner Tuesday night at the TPC at Summerlin for the commission members. He plans to bring several dozen community leaders with him.

The governor also is trying to find the best possible time to show the commissioners a special video tape touting Las Vegas.

Tuesday morning, however, after the governor's opening remarks, the hearing is expected to get off to a rough start for the industry during a panel discussion on sports wagering, a $2.3 billion-a-year business in Nevada. Gaming regulators here recently tightened up rules governing sports betting.

Several betting critics, such as NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, NCAA investigator William Saum and Mitzi Schlichter, ex-wife of one-time football star Art Schlichter, who has had a well-publicized gambling problem, are scheduled to address the commission.

It's one of the reasons why the casino industry's expectations are very low for this week's meeting.

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