Berger Gang tried to sneak casinos past public early on
It’s sad that we’ve become so cynical — so used to our elected officials lying to us. But the chicanery and sleaze around the latest casino shenanigans in Raleigh really hit an all-time low.
Thanks to WRAL, we now know the casino shenanigans in Rockingham County got quite a covert, sneaky start:
When Sharon Ellis heard rumors that a casino might be built down the highway from her home in Rockingham County, she called the county’s planning and zoning office.
“They were very kind on the phone, but he did kind of laugh,” Ellis recalled. “He said people can stir up quite the rumors in the county. It kind of gave me a little bit of assurance.”
That was the first week of July, Ellis said, and the next week she called county commissioners with the same question. They were vague, Ellis said, telling her that a 192-acre plot that was up for rezoning would be the biggest project in county history, but they couldn’t provide details.
“They called it an economic development project that would be good for our county,” Ellis told WRAL News this month. “And they just stated that casinos are illegal in North Carolina.”
What was happening behind the scenes suggests that key details of a legislative plan to legalize commercial casinos in North Carolina were already known, to some, perhaps including the son of a powerful Republican lawmaker pushing the plan. Zoning inquiries by a national casino developer and a little-noticed county rule change came before the Rockingham casino effort was public knowledge.
Shifting explanations from Rockingham County leadership about that change raise questions about who knew what, and when, as county residents and rank-and-file lawmakers at the statehouse complain about transparency.
The casino issue has become a political wedge that has divided Republican lawmakers and delayed a $30 billion state budget — an impasse that has prevented teachers from receiving expected raises and blocked a provision that would deliver health insurance to hundreds of thousands of uninsured North Carolinians.
Casinos are legal only on tribal lands in North Carolina. But key members of the state legislature’s Republican majority – including Rockingham County state Sen. Phil Berger – insist the state budget being negotiated now must include language authorizing new casinos. Closed-door talks on the issue date back at least to the spring.
Even though casinos were illegal when Ellis made her calls in early July, Rockingham County commissioners had voted in June on a key change to county ordinances that would help pave the way for a casino to be built if the legislature changes the law.
That unanimous June 19 vote removed a special use permit requirement for electronic gaming operations in the county and changed the definition of Rockingham’s “highway commercial” zoning designation so it would allow any activity licensed by the state.
Few noticed. No one spoke at a public hearing on the issue. But the vote became crucial in August when the board of commissioners, again unanimously, voted to rezone the 192-acre plot next to a summer camp for children with special needs as “highway commercial.”
That designation allows a wide variety of commercial uses such as gas stations, hotels and restaurants. Now, with the ordinance change, it would also allow a casino, if state lawmakers authorize them. Lawmakers haven’t formally released a casino bill, but WRAL News obtained a draft copy in mid-July.
Hundreds of people attended the August rezoning meeting, filling overflow rooms at the county government complex to protest the decision. Suddenly, an unannounced casino plan backed by a national developer that had requested the rezoning, hired lobbyists at the General Assembly, and whose executives had given state lawmakers campaign donations going back to 2022, didn’t seem like a rumor.
“It went from being kind of an absurd thought … to being confirmed that was in fact the plan,” Ellis said.
‘One-two punch’
All five Rockingham County commissioners, including Berger’s son, Kevin, either declined to speak with WRAL News about the zoning votes or didn’t return messages.
According to public records on the June 19 vote, unnamed county leadership asked to redefine highway commercial zoning by amending the county’s unified development ordinance, or UDO, a collection of land use rules used by local governments to manage growth. Planning and Zoning Director Hiram Marziano said the request came from the County Manager Lance Metzler and County Attorney Clyde Albright, and that it likely came in May.
How they knew in May or June that the UDO needed to change remains unclear. The county planning board gave preliminary approval to the UDO amendment a week before county commissioners finalized it on June 19.
Planning board member Jim Fink later said that the planning board’s chairman, Paul Ksieniewicz, instructed him before that meeting to not question the change.
“When I inquired about [the UDO amendment] they said the commissioners had asked for that,” said Fink, who voted against the amendment. “I said, ‘What do you mean they don’t want us to ask questions?”
Ksieniewicz told WRAL News that he didn’t recall saying that, and that the UDO amendment wasn’t tied to the casino.
“The two are unrelated,” he said. “The planning board had absolutely no knowledge of putting a casino there.”
Albright responded to questions in writing, but his answers shifted as WRAL News probed how he knew the UDO amendment was needed, unless county leaders knew a casino was planned.
Albright initially said he suggested the amendment after noticing in March a bill to legalize sports betting moving through the General Assembly. That became law in June, legalizing mobile sports betting, betting lounges near major sports venues and betting on horse races.[…]
There’s no representing of US going on in Raleigh. True representatives don’t lie to people they’re supposed to be representing. We have a bunch of low-to-NO-character types sitting around waiting for more cash and to ask ‘How high?’ when their out-of-town / out-of-state deep-pocket ‘massas’ says JUMP.
The “casino caucus” needs to be run out of the Republican Party on a rail. They all need to be primaried from the Berger boys to all the useful idiots that supported them in the legislature. Both of the “Gambling Policymakers of the Year” – Perry in the Senate and Saine in the House, in particular need to GO, and everybody who was on the take from the casino special interests. THROW THE RASCALS OUT.
We do NOT need these crooked Tammany Hall politics in the Republican Party. Phil Berger is a disgrace. They give our party a bad name.
…. See if you can find a credible candidate to run against Sen Berger. And you can fund them as well. We already have Casino gambling in North Carolina , and just over state line , and more coming. If as you say the local constituents dont like their representatives actions , they vote them out of office. I well remember when the State Lottery was passed , at the 11th hour under cloak of darkness and a few vocal opponents said those who voted for it would be voted out of office…. never happened. Leadership isn’t a popularity contest. Maybe you should run for office sir.
“Leadership” should be people of principle, not political prostitutes who turn tricks for whatever special interests seek their favors, including very liberal ones.
The very first time that Berger and Moore sold out the GOP base to pander to the liberal special interests, the repeal of HB2, the bathroom privacy bill, they cost us our supermajority, which we did not get back until Cotham switched parties. Christian conservative voters abandoned the turncoat RINOs. Berger and Moore, and their lieutenants are the same breed of cat and type of leader that Benedict Arnold was in the Revolutionary War.
ANYONE who runs in a Republican primary against that turncoat scumbag Phil Berger will get some pesos from me.
The NCGA made certain there would be no statistically significant post election audit to ensure there’s no vote flipping by the electronic voting systems before the Primary.
They also made sure a complete ballot reconciliation (# of voters = # of ballots?; which catches ballot stuffing) would not be required before the election is certified.
They like the election system just the way it is. It works for them.
Without divine intervention, these corrupt politicians will stay in power.
See Kari Lake vs Katie Hobbs.
We need not divine intervention. we need pissed off Republicans to rejoin the party, show up for 3 conventions and control the “party”. Closed primaries will stop the pandering to the center. You cannot fix anything as a UNA.
Agreed on getting pissed off Republicans out to the precinct meetings and conventions.
However, Berger and Moore and their cronies like Bell and Saine and Destin Hall in the House and Perry and Newton in the Senate do not pander to the “center”. They pander to the special interests, and the policy of those special interests is often to theLEFT, not the center, like the Green New Deal, marijuana, and the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. Put a skirt on Berger or Moore and they would be Nancy Pelosi. The Republican base is sick of that betrayal.