Are the Nevada Gaming Commission and the Nevada Gaming Control Board one entity?
No. It's true that they're both part of the same regulatory process and are symbiotic, but they serve different purposes.
To put it simply, the Control Board does all the heavy lifting, then presents its findings to the Commission for ultimate disposition.
In the beginning (i.e, 1955) was the Control Board. It was created to operate under the supervision of the Nevada Tax Commission. Its initial remit was to standardize rules for casinos statewide; hitherto, they'd been mostly the purview of individual counties. It also streamlined the tax-reporting process and, most notably, identified people it deemed “unsuitable” to participate in the casino business, primarily by initiating a licensing requirement, then investigating and approving or denying applicants, in a process that's gotten more stringent and expensive over the ensuing decades. (An excellent first-hand description of how that works can be found in our book Joe's Dash.)
Four years later in 1959, the Nevada Legislature created the Gaming Commission as a new oversight body, removing the Control Board from under the Tax Commission’s regulatory umbrella. Recommendations by the Control Board were subsequently acted upon by the Commission.
The Control Board conducts investigations and audits, computes tax payments, and makes licensing recommendations. But the final say lies with the Gaming Commission, which has a historical tendency to water down the Control Board’s concerns.
As the late Art Marshall, a former member of the Gaming Commission, once told us, “The Control Board dispenses justice. The Commission dispenses mercy.” At least that’s one way of looking at it.
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Kenneth Mytinger
Oct-23-2022
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