New Mexico has a bitter gaming history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Native tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicos are done batting around gaming as an important issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on January 16, 2010, 11:22 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.