New Mexico has a rocky gaming history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in 1990 to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Native bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has increased from 1999. That year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a key factor like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on January 30, 2019, 4:25 am and is filed under Casino. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.