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 cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the panel 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 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that American Indian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the state 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 process moving on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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