Your past experience will naturally dispose you to treat any proposal to expand public revenues with great skepticism. My second disadvantage is that to get my message across today, I must violate one of Nevada's most serious taboos. I must speak ill of gaming in general and our own gaming industry in particular. This is a grave fault in a politician and I must beg your indulgence. Having said this, I ask you to listen to what I have to say today with an open mind, to suspend judgment until you have had an opportunity to listen to the arguments and weigh the evidence.
Gaming is Nevada's largest industry.
It employs almost one-third of our workers and pays a substantial amount of our public revenues. The largest and most important tax that is peculiar to the gaming industry is the tax on gross gaming revenues. The legislature last voted to change these rates in 1987. The gross gaming fee produces revenues of about one-half billion per year. These revenues are deposited in the state general fund.