New Mexico has a complex gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would 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 1990 to draft a contract with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force arrived at an accord with two important local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying 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, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All kinds of operators try for a slice of the action. With hope, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.
