New Mexico has a complex gaming history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus 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 between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been lost 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 non-profit game providers acquired just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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