New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the working group arrived at an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.