New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold 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 compact with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby 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 legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as a key matter like they did in the 90’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on August 15, 2017, 10:25 pm 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.