New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel came to an accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that American Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing the government of New Mexico many 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 contract between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are through batting over gaming as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
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