New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to discuss a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the working group came to an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on March 13, 2016, 11:21 pm and is filed under Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.