Page 194 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2017

THEFINALSAY
Celebrating 25 years of gaming
in Mississippi
BRUCE
NOURSE
President, J. Levens Environmental LLC
I’m proud to say I was raised in Biloxi, graduated from Ole Miss, worked as a blackjack and craps dealer in Vegas, Reno and Tahoe...and in July 1991, I took advantage of a unique opportunity I had as the first deputy director of the newly formed Mississippi Gaming Commission.
For six years I served as a special agent for the Investigation Division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. When my home state legalized gambling, I applied for a position with the gaming commission and during the interview was told that my primary job would be to put
in place the Nevada-style regulatory system. A tall order indeed given that Nevada had regulated casinos for more than 50 years.
Nonetheless, I prepared to jumpstart Mississippi’s casino industry by secretly using the resources of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Over time, a variety of documents were taken without permission and organized to create what would become the foundation for the Mississippi regulatory system. I was determined to do my best for Mississippi even though it was at the expense of Nevada.
Once hired as deputy director, I left Carson City, Nevada, and arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, wheeling seven legal- sized boxes full of Nevada’s forms, policies, procedures, manuals, applications, regulations, releases, etc. I’m talking about material that Nevada had developed over decades of trial and error and legal battles touching on everything from the investigation of casino owners, to the enforcement of casino regulations, to the audit of casino books.
As I feared, my handiwork would soon be noticed by
the powerful Nevada Gaming Control Board. In the
early 1990s, Nevada required its licensees to apply for Foreign Gaming Approval if they wanted to operate casinos outside of Nevada; mainly because they wanted to investigate the other jurisdiction’s regulatory system to ensure there was a solid foundation in place.
It wasn’t long before
a Nevada company filed for Foreign Gaming Approval
to operate in Mississippi and the jig was up! Nevada
sent an investigator to Jackson to review our regulatory system and soon the Mississippi Gaming Commission received a nasty letter from the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Essentially the letter said that what I did was wrong and I should have asked permission before taking the documents. It went on to say that because I took documents developed by Nevada, they were confident that a solid regulatory foundation was in place...and granted Foreign Gaming Approval to the first of many Nevada companies allowed to operate in Mississippi.
My goal was to not reinvent the wheel and by doing
so get the casinos up and running as fast as possible.
The reality was that absolutely nobody could get up and running fast enough during the wild early days of the Mississippi casino industry. Mississippi applicants were begging for licenses to be issued because they knew what awaited them once they opened for business.
Yes, the first casinos to open hit the jackpot but even after 25 years the industry continues to prosper and the Mississippi Gaming Commission continues to shine as the gold standard of regulatory agencies. Somewhere there exists a long list of reasons why the Mississippi casino industry has been so successful. High on that list should be the Nevada Gaming Control Board for providing Mississippi with a solid regulatory foundation — even though it was taken without permission by a determined Biloxi boy.
194 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • October 2017
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