New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the American Indian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a bit of the action. With hope, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on March 16, 2023, 1:25 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.