New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to discuss an accord with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 big local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the American Indian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
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