New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel came to an accord with two important local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Native bands, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, 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, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since that time. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 90’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
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