New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in 1990 to draft an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent local bands 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 office in 1995, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. 10 years had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo business has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048. 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. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All types of operators try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did back in the 90’s. That’s without doubt wishful 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.