New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the American Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico 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 process moving on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger 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 revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicos are done batting over gambling as a key matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
