New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. 10 years had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as an important factor 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.