Casino Enterprise Management

When a young minister asked an old time preacher to explain the effectiveness of his sermons, the preacher replied: “Son, furst I tells ‘em what I’m gonna tell ‘em, then I tells ‘em and then I tells ‘em what I told ‘em.”

Repetition is certainly one way to get your message across. But if the message itself lacks clarity, repeating it will not improve the communication.

In the world of gaming regulation, licensees like unambiguous direction. I’ve occasionally heard licensees complain about regulations that they perceived as burdensome, but far more often their plea is simply “just tell us what you want!” Licensees aren’t mind readers and regulators that fail to clearly communicate their expectations shouldn’t be surprised when there is push back at their sudden zeal to enforce some obscure or long dormant rule provision. Regulators that play “gotcha” or vacillate between strict and relaxed enforcement models do not encourage voluntary compliance efforts.

It was heartening, therefore, to see that the Nevada Gaming Control Board, long a leader in creative regulatory approaches, has recently proposed a series of informal seminars in the form of workshops aimed primarily at mid-level supervisors and program managers to cover “collective areas of concern.”  (The proposal is contained in an Industry Letter, which can be found at http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/industry_ltr_220.pdf.). According to the proposal, the seminars “would allow the Board to identify some common pitfalls frequently seen and provide an opportunity for the industry to voice their challenges and concerns” as well as providing “any needed clarification of governing statutes and regulations.”

This is precisely the sort of outreach that all regulatory agencies should consider. On the industry side, licensees should leap at the opportunity to dialog directly with the regulators and obtain the sort of “safe harbor” clarity that they desire and deserve.

Postscript: Please feel free to email me at tnelson@grcgaming.com. All communications will be treated as confidential unless otherwise specified.