New Mexico has a complex gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force came to an accord with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game providers acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
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