New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore 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, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on October 26, 2019, 3:25 pm 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.