New Mexico has a stormy gaming history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to create a contract with New Mexico Native bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. Ten years had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gaming as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.
