Thursday, June 10, 1999 | 11:33 a.m.
(c) Copyright 1999 Las Vegas Sun
The country's most widely known casino operator Wednesday called a just-completed federal gambling study a "giant waste of time and money."
Mirage Resorts Chairman Steve Wynn said the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which will make public its report June 18, has concluded what everyone already knows -- legalized gambling brings tremendous economic benefits to a community.
"A lot of people whose time is valuable and whose personal resources could have been dedicated to more productive use had to stop what they were doing and sit through this foolishness," Wynn said in an interview with the Sun.
Wynn, whose company operates five casinos in Southern Nevada and one in Mississippi, opened the $1.6 billion Bellagio megaresort on the Las Vegas Strip last October in the middle of the two-year federal study.
In the past several years, Wynn and the casino industry have beefed up political contributions and intensified lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill to deal with the study commission and other threats to the industry. Wynn co-founded the American Gaming Association (AGA) in 1995, as the industry's critics were drumming up support in Congress for legislation creating the nine-member federal commission.
Wynn said the panel, which was given $5 million by Congress to examine gambling in the United States, will end up becoming a "public relations trip" for the casino industry -- a prediction he said he made before the study formally was launched in the summer of 1997.
"The results of the report will give people in various jurisdictions in favor of using gambling to raise (revenues) the ability to debate successfully the anti-gaming people who are used to throwing numbers around," he said.
But one high-profile gaming critic, the Rev. Tom Grey, of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, said next week's report will be used as ammunition for his assaults on the industry in Congress and statehouses across the country.
"When he starts feeling the ammunition from that report whizzing around his operation, then he can remember his quotes," Grey said of Wynn's reaction to the commission's work.
Grey, an Illinois methodist minister, said casino industry leaders are going to slap themselves for playing a "foolish hand" the past two years while fighting the federal commission's efforts.
"They've drawn attention to their money and muscle, and they've got nothing to show for it but a study that will be used against them," he said. "If I were them, I'd be puckering up about what's happened here."
But Wynn, who last month contributed $250,000 to House Democrats looking to regain control of the House in 2000, said the anti-gaming forces, supported by the likes of conservative Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., have been "immeasurably diminished" over the last several years and haven't been taken seriously by the American public.
Wynn said Wolf, one of the architects of the federal gambling commission, won't find support in the House to pass whatever anti-gambling legislation he might be considering in the aftermath of the panel's report.
"Americans in general don't like being told what's right and wrong for them, and this whole anti-gaming thing is about that," Wynn said. "It's overreaching."
Wynn added the public is "strongly committed" to regulating its own leisure time.
Earlier this week, AGA President Frank Fahrenkopf told a group of gaming lawyers in Las Vegas that his organization will unveil a nationwide poll soon showing 83 percent of Americans approve of gambling as a form of entertainment.
Fahrenkopf also said the federal commission's report will "confirm the important and dramatic economic benefits of gaming" and show that the industry is part of the country's "mainstream culture."
Much of the language lauding the economic benefits was inserted into the report at the commission's final meeting in San Francisco last week at the insistence of commissioners aligned with the industry.
The commission's report also will contain recommendations that give the industry cause for concern.
It will suggest that communities across the country take a pause before expanding gambling.
And it will recommend a heightened awareness of problem gambling, a betting ban on college athletics and tight restrictions on political contributions in state and local races.
Wynn said he's not worried about a possible moratorium because his Nevada-based company already has locked up the land it needs to expand its operations.
And he predicted Nevada never will enact laws prohibiting the casino industry from participating in the political process.
The industry is regarded as the biggest political player here with Wynn being its star cleanup hitter.
This past legislative session, Wynn, who has put together his own political machine at Mirage Resorts, won as much as an $18 million tax break for his Bellagio art exhibit.
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