New Mexico has a complex gambling background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two important local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. 10 years had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
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