Where I Stand -- Bob Faiss: Gaming industry still has many obstacles to overcome

PREDICTING THE FUTURE of the gaming and entertainment industry in Clark County is more difficult today than ever before. Every review by analysts who are paid to chart the expected course of the industry contains words of caution about possible impediments to its continued growth and success.

We regularly hear warnings about the impact of such actual, pending and possible developments as the following:

* The addition of nearly 22,000 hotel rooms by the year 2000 on the Las Vegas Strip, continuing the threat of surplus room capacity.

* Declining numbers of passenger seats available on long-distance flights into Las Vegas.

* Growing traffic congestion on Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and Southern California.

* Moves to expand Indian casinos in California, the largest tourist market for our area.

* Continual threats of damaging congressional action, such as the amendment in the U.S. Senate to revoke the deduction of gaming losses from gambling winnings. That amendment could have taken $1.1 billion out of the pockets of gamblers nationally over the next four years alone. It required the combined efforts of Sen. Harry Reid and Sen. Richard Bryan, both D-Nev., and the Senate's GOP leadership to derail.

* The 1999 report of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, which those who seek to cripple the gaming industry have seized upon as a device to further their cause.

Each of those concerns is real. Among them, the danger of congressional action revives the memory of a bill in the wake of the 1951 Kefauver crime hearings to impose a 10 percent tax on the gross receipts of all gambling transactions. Had it passed, Nevada casinos would have been forced out of business and you wouldn't be reading this column now.

It was only through the efforts of former Nevada Sen. Pat McCarran, whom the Washington Post proclaimed the most important member of Congress in the early 1950s, that it did not pass. McCarran used his considerable influence to substitute a modified bill that limited the 10 percent tax to race books. Nevada's casinos survived, but 85 percent of the race books -- then stand-alone businesses -- shut their doors.

Still, there are several reasons to expect that Nevada and its gaming and entertainment industry will once again overcome the threats to its future and maintain Clark County's leadership as the premier gaming and entertainment locale in the world.

When resorts currently under construction are completed, Clark County should have 18 of the 20 largest hotels in the world. Those resorts and related attractions will offer entertainment experiences unsurpassed anywhere.

The industry will continue to reinvent itself, through the innovations and international attention that will accompany the creation of new resorts and and other new landmarks and through improvements in existing properties to meet the challenge of the newcomers. The industry will continue to offer the most diversified and rewarding gaming, entertainment, dining and shopping experiences, at a more reasonable cost than competitors elsewhere.

Confidence in the stability and promise of the industry should be bolstered by the scheduled or expected entries into the industry by international gaming leader London Clubs International and by Black Entertainment Television, whose dynamic chairman, Bob Johnson, envisions a BET resort in Las Vegas as the setting for an entertainment program that would be fed into nearly 50 million cable television households nationally.

The industry will continue to have leadership that matches its unique physical facilities. The best executives of the gaming and entertainment industry, such as the chief officers of the Nevada Resort Association, Chairman Hector Mon of Harrah's Nevada and President Richard Bunker, can match the best of any other business or government sector in the country.

Various of those industry leaders joined with Nevada's U.S. senators; Rep. John Ensign and Rep. James Gibbons, both R-Nev.; American Gaming Association President Frank Fahrenkopf and his effective staff; the NRA's multi-talented Washington representative, Wayne Mehl; and others to forge alliances that resulted in the defeat of the IRS challenge to deductibility of employee meals and the allocation of resources to ease the Barstow bottleneck on I-15. Those alliances can be expected to provide resolution of other problems.

The leadership on the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, namely Nevada Gaming Control Board Chairman William Bible, MGM Chairman Terry Lanni, and Culinary Union chief executive John Wilhelm, give cause to believe that the ultimate report of the commission will be reasoned and objective.

Although there are difficulties ahead for Clark County's gaming and entertainment industry, some of which will severely test its ingenuity, resolve and strength, I am confident its ultimate success is a good bet.

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