New Mexico has a rocky gaming history. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent 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 1995, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Indian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as an important issue like they did back in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on February 21, 2016, 3:21 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.