"This is one of the best jobs around," Neil Peterson told the Montana Tavern Times a couple of days after he was named the new executive director of the Gaming Industry Association of Montana (GIA).
"I'm excited to get started," he said. "I told the (selection) committee I'd spend between now and March 31 (when present GIA executive director Rich Miller's resignation is effective) getting up to speed. I met with Rich for four hours this morning."
Then Peterson paused momentarily: "I've got huge shoes to fill."
Peterson is no stranger to the world of licensed businesses as he supervised that process in the Montana Department of Revenue for years, eventually coming to know and work with Montana Tavern Association lobbyist and government affairs counsel Mark Staples, and MTA executive director Diana Koon.
Peterson is also no stranger to testifying before legislative committees or helping massage legislation into functional law, having represented DOR in that capacity for years.
He does acknowledge that he has much to learn about the nuts and bolts aspects of licensed business operation, though, and about business association management. In fact, he's about to by initiated through "trial by fire" as the GIA annual convention, a function he will have to coordinate, will remain slated for May 20-21 at Chico Hot Springs.
"I'm a firm believer," Peterson said, " that I can't make excuses by saying 'I'm new. I didn't know that.' I will be ready for the general election and the Legislature."
Peterson was born in Crosby, N.D., and graduated high school in Westby in extreme northeast Montana. He graduated in 1978 from Carroll College in Helena with a bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting and Business Administration. He played varsity basketball for Carroll for three years and was named all-conference twice.
He was hired the same year by the state revenue department to conduct corporate tax audits. By 1991 he had achieved Revenue Agent IV status when he was then promoted to Audit Manager in charge of a staff of 11 auditors. Beginning in 1994 he served as a DOR bureau chief supervising 48 employees and managing a budget in excess of $2 million.
By 1996 Peterson was a department division administrator in charge of 130 permanent and 65 seasonal staff and a budget in excess of $7 million. In 2005 he left the department.
Since then he's remodeled his own home while he overhauled and marketed another. He explains his father was a jack-of-all-trades and Peterson says he learned his remodeling skills from his father.
He has also engaged private business clients and has been helping shepherd them through the complex liquor and gaming licensing process as well as doing some consulting on liquor law.
He is married to Debbie and has four children including John, 25, an aspiring fire fighter living in Helena; a daughter, Jamie, 22, who will be graduating from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., as a junior high math teacher; a daughter, Casey, 19, who is taking up creative writing as a freshman at the University of Montana and a son, Tommy, 16, who is a sophomore at Helena Capital.
Peterson says he enjoys golf and all kinds of sporting events, but is clearly passionate about refereeing football. He has been a football official in the Big Sky college conference for the past 11 years and is now a supervisor of football officials for the Frontier collegiate conference.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, April, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.