New Mexico has a complex 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 cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local tribes 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 Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Native bands, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus costing the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a hot button factor like they did back in the 90’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on June 11, 2017, 8:25 pm 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.