New Mexico has a bitter gaming history. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore denying the government 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 ball rolling on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown since 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 90’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
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