New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. 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 cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local bands 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 Indian wagering in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus costing the government 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 ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. 10 years had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.
