Harrah’s does it again (and again … and again)

Hey, Gary Loveman, don’t let the doorknob hit you in the butt as you skedaddle out of Kansas for the second time.  Ever-fickle, Harrah’s Entertainment turned tail and ran from the Sunflower State on the very date its Wichita-area proposal was to go before the Kansas Lottery Commission. The latter gave both remaining petitions — from Global Gaming Solutions and Peninsula Gaming — the thumbs-up and kicked the matter on up the ladder of state.

Even a potential 78% revenue share wasn’t enough to keep Harrah’s in the game. Company officials said the eleventh-hour bugout reflected “careful consideration” and analysis of “many data points.” The question then becomes why the careful consideration of these manifold data points wasn’t conducted before Harrah’s assembled its proposal — the best of the three, IMO — and went through the Sumner County approval process. This kind of flibbertygibbet decisionmaking is all too characteristic of the Loveman regime: Fire, aim… oh wait, we’re not ready.

What wasn’t a factor, evidently, was Harrah’s laborious debt load. The Lottery concluded the company was capable of bankrolling the $260 million project, even if it was “working for its debt holders.” Still, Harrah’s is highly unlikely to ever be taken seriously in Kansas again and states like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania might start looking askance at its handsome renderings and revenue projections.

Indian giver. Beware of gaming executives bearing large cardboard checks for 30 million smackeroos. Harrah’s is holding at least $20 million pledged to the University of Southern Nevada, hostage, demanding that it be matched by the State of Nevada. I don’t know if Loveman actually listens to government-affairs veep Jan Jones, who may have tried to clue him in on the fact that Nevada is careening toward an unprecedented budget shortfall. If the cutbacks made in recent legislatures seem severe — the closure of state parks even got put on the table — it was a tea party compared to what’s in store in 2011. Simply put, the state doesn’t have $20 million to spare and, if it did, there are people far needier than the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration (which is actually faring pretty well). Harrah’s should either pony up the cash, no strings attached, or take that big-ass check and put it in the shredder.

Education isn’t the only area in which Harrah’s has its snout in the public trough. In another stick-it-to-the-tourists move, CityLife reports (second item) that the company is proposing to sock the Strip corridor with a 0.9% sales-tax increase, which would bring that levy to 9% (and don’t forget the 12% lodging tax). Nevada has one of the highest sales-tax rates in the nation and, once Clark County imposts are added, an increase to 9% would push Southern Nevada past New York and into California range when it comes to taxing consumers up the wazoo.

Never mind that Harrah’s proposed stadium (the beneficiary of the taxpayers’ largesse, above) would create such gridlock as to make the Flamingo/Strip intersection impassable before and after events. The company’s pushing a regressive tax, one which disproportionately hits the very customers Vegas is struggling to bring back. It also sends the wrong message to tourists — and casts the company’s “no resort fees” posture in quite a different light.

It’s a drop in the bucket of Nevada unemployment but 140 new jobs at the Tropicana Las Vegas is worth celebrating all the same. Anybody care to make an over/under on the number of applicants per job? The Trop will have no shortage of qualified personnel from which to choose. Speaking of which …

Shuffle Master is still just shuffling along in its search for a new CEO, a process that won’t be wrapped up until around New Year’s. If Tamares Group can land a former Harrah’s VP, why is it so difficult for Shuffle Master to find good help? Thankfully, the company is running well on autopilot, grossing over $50 million in the last quarter, thanks to table game-installation in Pennsylvania and Delaware, as well as increased e-table sales in Singapore. Which reminds me that Sands Marina Bay is one of several Las Vegas Sands properties to engage in mass sackage of upper management. Perhaps Shuffle Master should give some of those guys a jingle. Meanwhile …

… heads continue to roll in an ongoing housecleaning of Wynn Resorts‘ nightclub braintrust. Like I said, getting involved with that scene means schlepping the trash to the curb every so often, as Sands and pre-Harrah’s Planet Hollywood could testify.