New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that American Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the American Indian tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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