Rules and regulations approved for Nebraska casinos; waiting for Ricketts’ signature

All six licensed horse tracks, in Lincoln, Omaha, South Sioux City, Columbus, Grand Island and Hastings, have announced plans to add casinos.

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Casino rules and regulations were officially approved on Friday. They are now going to Governor Pete Ricketts’ desk for final approval.

If this happens, we will start to see casinos being built in the state for the first time.

“I think when all 6 facilities for the existing race tracks are up and running, I think we are talking about around $100 million a year in revenue,” Executive Vice President of the Nebraska Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, Lynne McNally said.

McNally says the property tax relief fund is just a small portion of the significant economic impact that these facilities are going to have on Nebraska; thousands of jobs, sales tax and even the ag sector of the state.

“When you have increased horse racing in the state, you have increased breeding and you have increased sales and everything that goes along with that is all ag based,” McNally said.

The approval of rules and regulations is a big step forward for casinos to happen in the state. McNally says she is confident in Gov. Ricketts signing off.

“He knows that this was an overwhelming mandate of the people of the state of Nebraska last year and so I am confident that he would not want to do anything to stand in the way of getting significant property tax relief back to the state of Nebraska,” McNally said.

Everything that you can think of to provide security, safety and regulation for any casino that is built in the State of Nebraska, McNally says that is what rules and regulations are. They have been putting these together since November of last year.

“They have taken ideas from other states that already have casino gambling and they went through an independent evaluation process, they did an RFP, hired an evaluator to look up the rules and regs and make sure they didn’t leave anything out, McNally said.

All six licensed horse tracks, in Lincoln, Omaha, South Sioux City, Columbus, Grand Island and Hastings, have announced plans to add casinos. Six additional racetracks have been proposed in Bellevue, Gering, Kimball, Norfolk, North Platte and York.