New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gaming as a hot button matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.
