New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.
October 25th, 2020
Eli
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