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Nevada Resort Association endorses energy choice ballot question

Riley Snyder
Riley Snyder
EnergyIndyBlog
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Nevada’s largest association of casinos has officially endorsed the Energy Choice Initiative.

The Nevada Resort Association, which includes most of the major casino and hotel properties in the state including MGM Resorts, the Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts, announced Friday that it plans to support the proposed constitutional amendment to turn Nevada’s electric market from a monopoly to a competitive retail market. The endorsement was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“We support a yes vote on Question 3 because we believe that our employees and residents should have the same opportunity for choice that we had,” the association said in an emailed statement.

Although the organization stayed neutral on the measure during the 2016 election cycle, the proposal has long garnered support from individual casinos. MGM Resorts publicly backed the initiative in 2016 and donated $10,000 to it, and one of the measure’s primary bankrollers has been the Las Vegas Sands, which has contributed $11 million to groups supporting the measure since 2015.

Several casinos have recently moved to take advantage of a state law that allows them to leave as a customer of NV Energy and purchase power on the open market after paying an “exit fee” for the loss of expected revenue.

Exit fees totaled $87 million for MGM, $15 million for Wynn, $44 million for Caesars, $3.3 million for the Peppermill and $27 million for data center company Switch, which is also funding the ballot measure.

The Las Vegas Sands was assessed a $23.9 million exit fee, but ultimately decided not to pay and to stay a customer of NV Energy. An executive for the company said in September that part of the reason for launching the initiative was over the “lack of transparency” on the assessed exit fees.

Opposition to the ballot measure has been almost entirely funded by NV Energy, and has attracted the support of community and business groups including the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Nevada Mining Association, AARP Nevada and several environmental groups.

Disclosure: Switch, NV Energy, MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts have donated to The Nevada Independent. You can see a full list of donors here.

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