New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel came to an agreement with two prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the American Indian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has increased from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of operators try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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