New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group came to an accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has increased from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gaming as an important factor like they did in the 90’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on April 19, 2018, 4:25 am and is filed under Casino. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.