New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to discuss a contract with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore 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 legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on June 7, 2022, 11:25 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.