New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore denying 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
