Members of the Nebraska Racing and Gaming Commission Friday accepted the retirement of executive director Tom Sage, effective March 12. The commission also granted his request for medical leave through March 11.

Commissioners voted to appoint Casey Ricketts, the agency’s director of compliance, as interim executive director. Ricketts said said she has “large boots to fill.”

The change comes on the heels of some controversy.

Some critics have expressed concern that a $48,000 market-study report the commission obtained lacked detail and failed to obtain information that lawmakers wanted about the future of statewide gambling. They say the report from The Innovation Group on statewide racing and gaming should have been contracted via the more formal request-for-proposals process.

​Questions also have been raised about the commission’s purchase last year of 10 short-barrel semi-automatic rifles intended for use by the commission’s investigators.

But at the commission’s meeting Friday, commissioners who spoke about Sage’s retirement expressed nothing but praise for him.

​Commissioner Tony Fulton thanked him for nearly three decades of service.

“He’s a good man,” Fulton said. “He’s hard-working. Diligent. He stepped right up to the plate when the voters had their say. It was a two-person operation until that vote. So this has been a very heavy lift, and Tom Sage has done an admirable job.”

Voters in 2020 approved casino gambling at licensed racetracks.

Chairman Denny Lee said Sage joined the commission staff in 1990 and has been executive director for 15 years. After the passage of Legislative Bill 876, the state’s casino gaming law, the commission was tasked with a “massive” expansion of staff, Lee said.

“I too, personally, and on behalf of the commission and the industry, congratulate Tom on his great service to the industry and the state, and wish him the very best in his retirement.”