Nevada Assembly Votes Today on Interactive Gambling
by Fred Faust, RGTonline.com
The Nevada bill that authorizes interactive gambling is scheduled for a vote today by the Nevada Assembly. If, as expected, AB 296 passes, it moves to the state Senate. Passage there and signature by the governor would make Nevada the first U.S. state to legalize interactive gambling.
“We’re halfway home!” the bill’s sponsor, Republican Merle Berman of Las Vegas, said in an email this morning.
The Assembly has until Friday to approve the bill and send it to the state Senate. Gov. Kenny Guinn won’t say whether he would sign the bill. It has the support, however, of the Nevada Resort Association, the trade group for the state’s major hotel-casino operators.
Berman introduced the bill March 7. It was unanimously approved, with amendments, by the Judiciary Committee April 16. Nevada casino-hotels that already hold gaming licenses would be permitted to offer interactive gambling, if they obtain a separate license for that.
AB 296 does not guarantee that Nevada will actually issue the licenses. It is an “enabling bill” that leaves broad discretion to the state’s regulators about whether, when and how, to proceed. Before issuing licenses, the regulators would have to conclude that interactive gambling conforms with “all applicable laws” and can be properly regulated.
If AB 296, and a companion bill, AB 578, pass, regulators are expected to take more than a year to study the issue and develop regulations. Dennis Nielander, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, told RGT Online that the Board would likely conduct a series of public workshops.
The Board would begin “with some kind of skeletal framework,” he said. “Then we would just start taking testimony, just working through it, until we can come up with something the Board members can agree on. Then we make a recommendation up to the Commission, and they’ll have their own set of hearings.”
The Nevada Gaming Commission is the policy-making arm of the state’s regulatory system. Nielander said the Board usually tries to do the leg work for the Commission, sending something to the Commission that’s been debated and has a record that commissioners can review. |
