Before public caught on, Rockingham County made crucial change to allow casino
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.
“Seeing that [the sports gambling bill] included 'electronic games' such as sweepstakes gaming, I suggested to our county manager and community development director to be proactive, should state-licensed organizations or companies decide to come to Rockingham County,” Albright said in describing why he recommended changing the UDO.
But the sports gambling law, which is separate from the still-ongoing debate over casinos and doesn’t allow sports betting lounges in Rockingham county because they must be tied to major sporting venues. The rural county doesn’t have one. And despite Albright’s rationale for changing the UDO, the sports betting law doesn’t deal with sweepstakes machines, sometimes called video poker or video lottery terminals, and no draft of the bill ever included the phrase “electronic games.”
Asked to point to the section of the sports gambling bill that led to the UDO change, Albright’s story changed. He indicated that he recommended the UDO amendment because of media coverage about video lottery terminals, which are the gambling kiosks in gas stations and restaurants that lawmakers have long tried to outlaw but are now considering legalizing.
Video lottery terminal language might end up in the state budget, but lawmakers still haven’t released the actual language, and it wasn’t part of the sports gambling legislation Albright initially pointed to in his initial explanation.
“Local news outlets have been reporting on electronic games, sweepstakes, and referring to a gaming market analysis, for many months,” Albright told WRAL News. “I make recommendations to my board accordingly."
The UDO amendment, combined with the decision to rezone the 192 acres, allows much more than “electronic games.” It would allow any entity licensed to do business by the state to build on that land “by right,” according to Brian Gulden, a land-use attorney planning a lawsuit to stop the casino project on behalf of local landowners.
The text amendment, Gulden said, was “absolutely crucial” to the casino project.
“How did you know to do it in June? Because they said, ‘We know what our end goal is, and how do we get there in the most discreet manner,’” Gulden said. “They just did this one-two punch, and they knocked out the community.”
Ksieniewicz denied that.
“The UDO text amendment did not set the stage for anything,” he said.
‘Perfectly timed’
Exactly when casino proposals got on local leaders’ radar is publicly unknown, partly because top state lawmakers have largely discussed the plan in secret. Even-rank-and-file General Assembly members say they didn’t see a written proposal until recently.
Phil Berger, the Senate leader and one of the state’s most influential politicians, said he decided to back casino expansions this spring when a casino opened across the Rockingham County line in Danville, Virginia. Virginia legalized casino gambling in 2020, but Berger said the flow of North Carolina customers, their money and the tax dollars casinos generate, wasn’t obvious until the casino opened.
“Somebody can tell you that they're going to smack you upside the face,” he said. “But until they do it, you know, that's when the realization really sets.”
The Cordish Cos., a Maryland-based developer, has been one of the plan’s biggest corporate supporters. Company executives began donating to state lawmaker’s political campaigns in November. The company has had lobbyists in North Carolina since 2021, but it beefed up that staff this year and added lobbyists with ties to Berger, including one from The Differentiators, a consulting firm run by Berger’s former chief of staff, Jim Blaine, and Berger’s former spokesman, Ray Martin.
It was the head of Cordish’s casino development division who, through a holding company, asked Rockingham County to rezone land for the project. That request is dated June 9, three days before the county planning board took up the UDO amendment and 10 days before the county commission finalized that amendment.
In March a Cordish casino in Maryland hosted a gambling symposium that drew North Carolina lawmakers and other officials, including Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson, who publicly supports building a casino in Rocky Mount. Rockingham County commissioners and other county leaders declined, through county spokeswoman Rebekah Pegram, to say whether they attended.
For Rockingham residents against the casino plan, it’s clear their leaders knew what to expect long before the project became public, and that they set the wheels in motion before a backlash could grow.
Doug Isley, a former planning board member, said the whole thing “smells of skunk.”
“Everything’s just perfectly timed,” he said. “Which stinks to high heaven.”
Fink, the planning board member who said he was told not to ask questions about the amendment, said he didn’t know what was up when he took that vote, but “it just didn’t feel right.”
"Now we know why,” he said. “It was a precursor.”
