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\tBy Conor Shine STEVE MARCUS Las Vegas Sun<\/p>\n
\tClark County Commissioner Tom Collins, shown during a county commission meeting at the Clark County Government Center Tuesday, April 16, 2013.<\/p>\n
\tWith a battle looming over how much revenue taverns can reap from bartop gaming machines, Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins has put forward a simple solution to the thorny issue \u2014 allow fewer slot machines at bars.<\/p>\n
\tCounty officials are preparing for a workshop Friday where they\u2019ll discuss crafting specific definitions for vague terminology included in the original 2011 law dealing with tavern gaming.<\/p>\n
\tCurrently, a tavern or bar is allowed to have up to 15 machines under state law, so long as the revenue from gaming is \u201cincidental\u201d to the primary business of serving food and alcohol.<\/p>\n
\tCommissioners went to great lengths in 2011 to provide specific definitions on kitchens and bars, even laying out square footage requirements.The restrictions were meant to rein in the fast-growing slot parlor industry, which has boomed in recent years by offering a clean, low-key environment for local gamblers who wanted to avoid the hassle of a casino.<\/p>\n
\tBut the 2011 rules never specifically defined exactly how much gaming revenue is \u201cincidental,\u201d an oversight creating problems for commissioners in 2014. Though it seems "incidental" would mean less than 50 percent of a business\u2019s revenue, the lack of specificity leaves a loophole Commissioner Steve Sisolak says is now being exploited.<\/p>\n
\tAlthough slot parlors are licensed as taverns and offer food and drinks, critics argue that gambling is the primary purpose of the businesses, accounting for up to 70 to 80 percent of their revenues and violating the spirit of the law.<\/p>\n
\tFriday\u2019s meeting will kick off a contentious process that will task commissioners and staff with developing a specific limit for how much gaming revenue can still be considered incidental to a bar\u2019s primary business.<\/p>\n
\tEach word of the ordinance will be scrutinized, with lawyers and lobbyists representing various gaming powers each trying to spin the new definitions in their client’s favor.<\/p>\n
\tRather than limiting bars by putting thresholds on gaming revenues something that would result in a \u201cbookkeeping nightmare,\u201d Collins suggested a simpler, more direct approach at today\u2019s county commission meeting.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cRather than trying to establish kitchen size and square footage size and the number of tables and chairs,\u201d Collins said, the county should consider reducing the number of slot machines a bar is allowed to have from 15 down to as few as five.<\/p>\n
\tCollins proposal didn\u2019t get a strong response from his fellow commissioners, but it will likely be one of the options considered as staff wrestle with how to better regulate tavern gaming.<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Conor Shine STEVE MARCUS Las Vegas Sun Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins, shown during a county commission meeting at the Clark County Government Center Tuesday, April 16, 2013. With a battle looming over how much revenue taverns can reap…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}