Gaming leaders worried as panel sets sights on LV

NEW ORLEANS -- With its meeting flooded out here on Friday, the National Gambling Impact Study Commission moves to higher ground in Las Vegas this November for its final road trip.

Industry leaders are worried that the anti-gaming faction on the nine-member panel will try to embarrass the casino industry on its home turf.

Aides for one anti-gaming commissioner, religious talk show host James Dobson, already have been contacting dissidents in the Las Vegas community looking for their input during the November meeting.

Wayne Mehl, a Washington lobbyist for the Nevada Resort Association, the industry's political arm in Nevada, said the industry expects its critics in the religious right to come full force at gaming in Las Vegas.

"Nothing happened here that changed my attitude that the situation for Las Vegas is pretty serious," Mehl said.

Frank Fahrenkopf, president of the Washington-based American Gaming Association, appeared less concerned.

But Fahrenkopf acknowledged Las Vegas is the last chance for the anti-gaming forces to embarrass the industry before the panel moves back to Washington to write its report.

"I don't think they'll get it on," Fahrenkopf said. "We'll be prepared."

Mehl said the commission's staff went out of its way to bring in people here and in Biloxi, Miss., on Thursday to trash the industry, and that's likely to happen again in Las Vegas.

Timothy Kelly, the panel's executive director, has insisted the latest site visit here has been fair to gaming.

But Mehl cited the testimony of former Chicago mobster William Jahoda, an expert on illegal gambling, as an example of bias against the industry.

Jahoda, who turned on his underworld associates and became a government witness in 1989, ripped into legalized gambling during controversial testimony in Biloxi on Thursday.

The commission also heard more expert testimony on problem (addictive) gambling before it was forced to adjourn early because of flooding caused by a tropical gulf storm.

When the panel comes to Las Vegas Nov. 10-11, its chief topics will be sports betting, gambling by minors, neighborhood gaming, and the extension of credit, including the use of ATM machines, by casinos.

These subjects all relate to problem gambling, where the casino industry is most vulnerable, Mehl said.

Another subject that could come up during the Las Vegas hearing is gaming's influence on politics in Nevada, Mehl said.

Three candidates who ran for governor this year, Republicans Lonnie Hammargren and Aaron Russo and Democrat Joe Neal, all suggested Nevada should have a law that bans casinos from contributing to campaigns, such as the one in New Jersey.

Even as the commission met here last week, Neal, a longtime state senator, indicated he would push to get tough on casinos at the 1999 Legislature.

As his campaign was faltering at the close of the primary, Hammargren, Nevada's lieutenant governor, came out swinging against gaming, charging the state was "totally corrupt" and in "the hands of big-money casino people."

All three candidates didn't make it out of the primary, but they heightened awareness about the gaming industry's prominent role in Nevada politics.

"We have to redouble our efforts to make sure we tell the story we want told in Las Vegas, the one we expect the commission to come out and hear," Mehl said.

Gov. Bob Miller has appointed a 54-member committee to help prepare for the commission's visit. His top aides have been attending the panel's meetings across the country since March.

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