New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with 2 big local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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