New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel came to an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Indian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. 10 years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown from 1999. That year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a slice of the action. With hope, the politicos are through batting around gambling as an important issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on August 1, 2018, 9:25 pm and is filed under Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.