New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to create an accord with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Native tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, 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, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has increased from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on August 11, 2022, 7:25 am 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.