New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to draft an accord with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Native tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. 10 years had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.