New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 prominent 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 1995, it appeared that Indian wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in the 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 took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. Ten years had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gaming as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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