New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the working group arrived at an agreement with 2 important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, 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 legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as a hot button matter like they did in the 90’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
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