New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as a hot button matter like they did in the 90’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on April 2, 2021, 1:25 am 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.