21
January
Written by Kaeden.
Posted in: Casino
New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed 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 draft a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an accord with two important 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 over in 1995, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as a hot button factor like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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