Assembly shoots down casino bill

Cy Ryan and David Kihara

Thursday, June 2, 2005 | 11:19 a.m.

The Assembly on Wednesday voted not to concur with controversial Senate amendments to a gaming bill that would change regulations on neighborhood casinos, with Democrats saying the amendments changed the original nature of the bill.

The bill was scheduled to return to the Senate today.

Assembly Bill 485, introduced by Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks, originally sought to limit casinos in Washoe County and was passed through the Assembly.

However, Senate Republicans added changes to the bill earlier this week, including allowing residents to go to an arbitrator to appeal a decision to allow the building of casinos.

The amendment would eliminate the current law, which allows residents to appeal locally approved casino projects to the five-member review panel of the state Gaming Policy Committee.

In recommending the Assembly not concur, Anderson told his colleagues on the floor that there were "several stumbling blocks" in the amended version of AB485 that came over from the Senate.

Anderson said he was particularly concerned about the amendment that abolishes the review panel, which has twice overturned local government approval of casino projects in Las Vegas since 2000.

AB485 has become "so polarized" that lawmakers have lost sight of whether it makes for good public policy, Anderson said.

Many lawmakers, Anderson added, probably were hoping this issue would just "go away."

But Anderson said it was important to bring light to the Senate's amendments.

The two biggest neighborhood casino companies, Station Casinos and Boyd Gaming, have been lobbying hard for the bill along with Focus Property Group, a major developer of master-planned communities in Southern Nevada. The bill, as amended in the Senate, would exempt current neighborhood casino projects from new regulations.

Those regulations would require companies to disclose up front the size and scope of the projects to residents. It also would restrict the development of future casinos to master-planned communities.

Anti-neighborhood casino groups and the Culinary Union, which is looking to organize workers at both Station Casinos and the Boyd Group, have been lobbying against AB485. The opponents have set up a Web site and flooded lawmakers with e-mails voicing their concerns. They also have mounted a telephone campaign.

The most likely scenario for the bill now is that it will end up in a conference committee, with members of both houses negotiating the bill to find some common ground.

Leslie Pittman, Station Casinos vice president, said the provisions of the Senate bill would give residents more certainty about what would come into their neighborhoods -- and help avoid some of the controversies that roiled Station Casinos' plans for neighborhood casinos in Summerlin and near Rhodes Ranch last year.

The provision that would allow new sites for neighborhood casinos, beyond those already identified in urban Clark County, only in new master-planned communities particularly gives home buyers a degree of confidence, she said.

The bill would allow only one new casino on 75 acres within each master-planned community, which would be easily identified and publicly noticed for home buyers, she said.

"We're supportive of it because we believe it responds significantly to concerns we've heard in the community relating to disclosure," Pittman said. There would be "no surprises, so when people are going in there to purchase a home, they know from day one there is going to be a casino within that master-planned community.

"It also identifies and requires that local governments specify the size and scope of the casino well before hand," she added. "We think those are very good, sound public policy provisions."

There has been some concern raised about the size of the parcels allowed for new neighborhood casinos, but the issue of the appeals process has become a sticking point for Democrats and union leaders. The bill would replace the review panel of the Gaming Policy Committee created by the 1998 neighborhood casino legislation with an independent arbitrator.

Danny Thompson, executive director of the Nevada AFL-CIO, said the arbitrator could only consider technicalities.

"That committee (the Gaming Policy Committee) has overturned some neighborhood casinos that didn't meet the mustard that the community wanted," he said.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said she did not support the Senate changes to the bill because it essentially changes the spirit of the original bill.

Buckley said she wanted to "ensure that neighborhoods remain protected," and voted against the bill with the amendments.

Sen. Sandra Tiffany, R-Henderson, a vocal supporter of bringing casinos to neighborhoods, said she would still like to see the bill remain intact because of the benefits casinos bring to the community.

Even though residents wouldn't be able to bring appeals to the review panel of the Gaming Policy Committee, she said the arbitration process set up in the Senate version of the bill would essentially keep the appeals process intact.

Pittman said the bill would give residents multiple opportunities for public input during the arbitration process.

Thompson said people are concerned about the growing number of neighborhood casinos.

"There have been numerous incidents where casinos planned in these communities and in the case of Red Rock Station they were told there would be a 100-foot tower. People went out and bought homes based on that limitation. They then tried to build a 300-foot tower and people became upset."

He said people are concerned about neighborhood casinos.

"Is a neighborhood casino a hotel with bigger gaming areas than MGM Grand? If it has 300 rooms, is that a neighborhood casino?"