New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Native 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 would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a hot button factor like they did back in the 90’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on November 29, 2020, 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.