New Mexico has a stormy gambling history. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to create an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the pie. With hope, the politicos are through batting around gaming as an important factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
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