Some seek shakeup of gambling commission

Thursday, April 29, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Members of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission sought an 11th-hour staff shakeup Wednesday amid growing dissension over the panel's struggle to complete its report by a June deadline.

Commissioners urged Chairwoman Kay James to relieve Deputy Director John Shosky of his duties of writing the report, which the panel now says is due June 18, and replace him with Research Director Douglas Seay, sources said.

Over the last two days here, commissioners publicly and privately criticized the drafts Shosky had put together under the deadline pressure. Shosky has declined comment.

The proposed staff reshuffling came during a closed-door meeting of the divided nine-member panel Wednesday afternoon.

James recessed the public portion of the meeting to go into executive session to discuss what she described as personnel matters.

After 45 minutes, James reconvened the public hearing and announced the commission had agreed to hold an extra meeting before the report is submitted to Congress and the president on June 18. That meeting, she said, would take place in San Francisco June 2-3. The commission also is scheduled to meet in Washington May 17-18 to fine tune the report.

James, an administrator at Pat Robertson's Regent University in Virginia, did not provide additional details of the closed meeting and promptly adjourned the public session to a close.

Afterward, she declined to say whether there would be any staff changes, but she acknowledged commissioners discussed how to best use the staff.

A staff shakeup would be the second in the two-year history of the federal panel. Midway through the its study, Executive Director Nancy Mohr Kennedy abruptly resigned under what some considered controversial circumstances.

James, meanwhile, told reporters she was not concerned about the panel's inability to come to a consensus on a crucial vote earlier Wednesday to recommend that communities across the country impose a moratorium on the expansion of gambling and further study its effects.

The vote was 5-4, with the three members aligned with the casino industry -- Terry Lanni, Bill Bible and John Wilhelm -- voting against the recommendation.

James said she was confident the panel would stand united behind its final recommendations to the nation.

But even as the chairwoman was downplaying the panel's differences, which have clouded its work from the very beginning, there were strong signs of mounting dissension.

Talk surfaced that the pro-gaming forces on the panel now are considering writing their own minority report.

Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the American Gaming Association, said the deep split within the commission could diminish the importance of the final report.

"A 5-4 report is going to end up on a shelf somewhere," said Fahrenkopf, a veteran Washington insider. "The commission is at a crisis point right now."

At the meeting Wednesday, Wilhelm, international president of the Culinary Union, gave an impassioned speech about the staff's failure to consider the economic benefits of gambling in the report despite widespread testimony about those benefits at public hearings around the country.

Earlier, Bible suggested during a break in the hearing that the commission was like a "symphony without a conductor" heading into its most crucial phase .

And Lanni said he would not have trouble writing a minority report if the commission continued to remain divided on key issues.

Wayne Mehl, the Washington lobbyist of the Nevada Resort Association, said the split vote on the moratorium recommendation did not bode well for the casino industry as the commission moves to complete its report.

"It's a clear indication of where we're heading," Mehl said. "It's not the image we wanted coming out of this meeting. Nobody has ever called for a moratorium on something they've considered to be positive."

His response was in sharp contrast to Fahrenkopf, who was quoted in the Washington Post this morning as saying the industry "can live" with the call for a moratorium.

"We think that makes sense," Fahrenkopf told the Post.

James, meanwhile, did not rule out the possibility that the moratorium vote could be revisited before the commission's final recommendations are approved.

She predicted there won't be a need for a minority report by the time the panel completes its work in June.